


i’d take a bullet for you (but i’d need to check my schedule first)

by sonjjit



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Action, Comedy, Detectives, Drama, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Kim Jongin | Kai Being Dumb, M/M, Romance, Smut, Spies & Secret Agents, Undercover, Undercover as Married, birds aren't real they're just drones operated by the government, dumb jongin, is this a slow burn? you tell me, jongdae being a girl group stan, lots of champagne, lots of himbo jokes, milf magnet kyungsoo, rich people generally being terrible and doing terrible things, there's a lot going on here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:42:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 43,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29194017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonjjit/pseuds/sonjjit
Summary: “So, how does it feel to be relegated to backup for once?” Jongdae’s voice is so unerringly loud and chirpy in his left ear, it makes Jongin wonder why these earpieces never came with volume controls. “You’re like, the-rest-of-the-Pussycat-Dolls to Kyungsoo’s Nicole Scherzinger.”in which jongin learns through experience that it’s possible to detest champagne after having it served at every other meal; that they do, in fact, make child-sized Rolexes; and that minseok hadn’t written a way for him to navigate this situation. and really, all he wants is to go home.
Relationships: Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Kim Jongin | Kai
Comments: 75
Kudos: 161
Collections: Swords and Hearts 2020





	i’d take a bullet for you (but i’d need to check my schedule first)

**Author's Note:**

> **Code:** SAH541  
>  **Prompt:** detectives!kaisoo have to pretend to be husbands, living together and all that stuff. all the acting and investigating wouldn't be that hard if they didn't hate each other's guts so much.  
>  **Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction and none of the characters are owned by Swords and Hearts. All creative rights and ownership of this particular work of fiction lie with the respective authors.**
> 
> **Author's Note:** @ prompter; I know the original prompt said detectives, but I hope you’re okay with me stretching the bid a bit. and I also kind of went overboard with the word count...other than that, I hope you enjoy the story!  
> @ everyone else; there’s...a lot to unpack here. I hope you enjoy my bad jokes as much as I questioned why I wrote them. I haven’t written / published fic in over 5 years, so I hope my rustiness doesn’t show too much. if this story made you laugh or cry or question your sanity at any point, please do leave a comment if you can; it reminds me why I continually chose to lose sleep over this.
> 
> _**warnings:** brief mentions of sexual assault (but no written depictions of the act) (and not involving any characters in the story), gun violence, physical violence, blood/wounds, infidelity? kind of, inappropriate usage of pigeon drones (and subsequent repeated mentions of dead birds)_

The first time Jongin gets a gander of the inside of what would be their home for at least the next month, he accidentally drops his roller luggage onto Kyungsoo’s foot.

“ _Jesus_ ,” the latter hisses out, the start of a string of curses, but not before kicking Jongin’s luggage off his socked foot. It topples over onto the polished marble tile with a thud. “Did you really need to pack that much? We’re hardly on vacation here.”

Their immediate surroundings might say otherwise. The bureau, for once, decided not to play modest, providing the two of them with a luxurious three-story Spanish-style mansion buried deep within one of those exorbitant neighbourhoods in the hills. They have about three or four acres of land all to themselves, all green grass, fully-gated and everything. There’s a fountain with one of those cherubic angel statues spurting water out of its mouth in the driveway, and Jongin’s pretty sure he saw a ridiculously large swimming pool out back with a renovated patio and deck. They’re currently standing in the foyer of their new home, gawking at the palatial nature of it all, with a crystalline chandelier hanging above their heads and marble flooring leading off in every direction underneath their feet. Off to the side, there’s a staircase spiraling up towards the skylight that makes Jongin’s head spin just looking at it.

Jongin would like to think it’s because of their success rate as top-performing agents in their division that they get to live here. But he wouldn’t be surprised if Jongdae was somehow able to pull some strings or call upon some less-than-above-board connections. The man has been doing this a lot longer than any of them have (albeit, _illegally_ for a good duration of it), and probably has a burn book of blackmail thicker than the stack of paperwork Jongin has waiting on his desk when this is all over. He also highly suspects that, tucked somewhere in between all the sheets of intel Jongdae can use to extort foreign governments and/or predict the next domestic terrorist attack, are photos of when Jongin got trashed at the department Christmas party two years ago and thought it was a good idea to ride the electric bull while sloppily moaning the lyrics to Pretty Ricky’s “Grind With Me” into a karaoke mic.

A harsh elbow into his side brings him back to reality. “Close your mouth before something flies in there and dies, pretty boy.” There’s something sarcastically sweet in Kyungsoo’s tone, but the man only shoots him an icy glare as he brushes past him. “Park is coming to brief us in four hours. He wants us settled in by then.”

With a sigh, Jongin grabs his bag by the handle and sets it upright. He brushes the invisible dirt off the front of it with his fingers. “You do realize if we cause any damage, that comes out of _our_ paychecks, not the department’s. That _includes_ scratching the marble.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t turn around as he disappears further down the hallway, but the scoff he sends echoes back to him. “Then watch where you drop your things next time, _honey_.”

Jongin almost retches at the nickname. He still hasn’t quite gotten used to it, but he better get a grip on it pretty soon. He’s going to be hearing a lot of it in the near future. The mere thought sends a shudder down his neck.

\-----

Their handler, Agent Park, is this tall, gangly-limbed, relatively unassuming man who, even after the several years Jongin (and Kyungsoo) have been under his direction, _still has not learned how to properly tie his own tie._

There’s a tangled knot of red silk hanging about two inches below the lapel of his white dress shirt, leaving an infuriating amount of space where a button almost peeks out through the gap. Jongin has fantasized many times in the past about sticking his hand in that very space, getting a good grip on the fabric and giving it a good _tug_ , just to choke off whatever drone is coming out of the man’s mouth, usually when they’re being berated for not following protocol or creating unnecessary occupational hazard.

Right now, though, Agent Park is going over something that’s probably important with Kyungsoo, which leaves Jongin’s eyes to roam over to where there are fried, overgrown blond strands of hair sticking out from the back of his neck, haphazardly half-tucked into the collar of his grey suit jacket. The man had recently decided on growing his hair out into a mullet. Jongin makes a mental note to ask his handler if he’s going through a midlife crisis at the next departmental dinner, and if he needs a referral to Kyungsoo’s expensive pilates studio downtown.

Eventually, Agent Park’s attention shifts over to Jongin, leading said man to straighten himself from where he’s half slouched into the sofa cushions. He doesn’t dare check, but he swears he feels Kyungsoo rolling his eyes at him from where he’s perched on the far end of the sectional. To which he feels the indignance rise up in his throat - it had been a long day, they had been in rigorous preparation briefings since the morning, and after unloading all of their luggage from the car and bringing it into the house, Jongin had spent the next hour checking each and every room of their new home for unsolicited spyware while mapping out potential escape routes, if the occasion should ever so arise. Moreover, he had heard the glass doors to the back patio slide open and slam shut shortly after they had settled in, and Jongin couldn’t be bothered to see what Kyungsoo was up to outside while he was busy securing the premises.

So Jongin bites back his tongue with a forced exhale through his nostrils, which effectively prevents himself from sneering at the other man. If Agent Park notices any of it, he doesn’t comment, instead blazing on through the itinerary that they had all gathered here for on this dreary summer evening. Kyungsoo must have gone around and cracked open a few windows earlier, because Jongin can hear the chirps of crickets as Agent Park clears his throat.

“State your name,” he says, looking Jongin in the eye. Jongin, per his training and out of having done this dance many times, holds his gaze steadily.

“ _Yang Jaesung,_ ” Jongin recites, practiced.

“What’s your occupation?”

“Civil engineer. But I’m looking to get into finance and investment.”

“Why did you move out to Los Angeles?”

“My husband got a new job at an actuarial firm in the city. And we wanted to treat ourselves to the change of scenery.” Jongin upturns the end of his lip into a calculated smirk. “We’re considering it to be an extended honeymoon that never ends.”

Agent Park nods in satisfaction at the ease of the answer. “Where did you meet your husband?”

“At a friend’s wedding. We were both acquaintances of the bride. She danced with both of us and when the DJ yelled switch we were kind of just thrown together. And the rest was history.”

Agent Park hums without looking up from his sheet. “And how long have you been married to _Daewon?_ ” It’s only when their handler nods his head toward Kyungsoo does Jongin glance over at his partner, who currently appears to be picking dirt out from underneath his fingernails with furrowed brows.

Jongin sighs. “About ten months ago. We got married in Tokyo. Destination wedding. We honeymooned around Japan for two weeks. Made the decision to move out to LA not too long after.”

Their handler nods, and Jongin steels himself for another question, but is surprised when the man closes the binder he’s holding with a sigh. He hears some rustling from the other end of the sofa, signaling that Kyungsoo’s attention is also piqued at the abrupt change in tempo.

“I’m going to trust that you’ve both reviewed your cover identities thoroughly and that you’ve read the example stories we have provided to help validate the authenticity of your relationship.” Agent Park crosses one ankle over the other, leaning against the back of the chaise that’s opposite the sofa. “You’re also free to come up with your own, so long as they are consistent with each other. Just remember, as always, if you have to improvise without consulting each other beforehand, the best lies are the ones that are based in shared truths.”

Jongin nods, and out of the corner of his eye, so does Kyungsoo, the two of them having heard some version of this speech a few dozen times over, albeit not when the stakes were this high. Agent Park takes it as a signal to continue on.

“For the sake of time, I’m going to move on to the next part of this briefing, which is the roles you will assume upon engaging with the suspects.”

The _suspects_ \- or _scumbags_ , in Jongin’s eyes - are the Im’s, a rich socialite couple living just a few doors further up the street from them. They present themselves as charming and warm, glamorous, and worthy of being envied, as they reside in the largest mansion in their block of houses and love to throw extravagant dinner parties at least once a week. They’re also suspected of running an elaborate sex crime gig where once every few months, they invite dozens of college-aged girls and a handful of equally-young boys up to their villa with promises of access to a luxe, Instagrammable party space and never-ending booze, then proceed to drug them and invite anyone living in the neighbourhood over to spend the night after paying the Im’s a hefty cover charge.

Many of the victims wake up not remembering what happened the night before, but the ones that do have found themselves quietly paid off or repeatedly threatened into silence by local law enforcement. It’s difficult for justice to be served when the entire neighbourhood, with every one of its residents using the girth of their wallets as extra padded cushioning when going to sleep at night, seems to be in on the scheme, whether they want to be or not. The Im’s likely keep tabs on these visitors for _insurance_ purposes, the people coming by the villa on these nights surely aren’t keen to divulge their activities, and the people they live with are either too ashamed to come forward or are actively complicit in their partners’ crimes.

When the case first came across Jongin’s desk after being assigned to him by Director Bae, he felt himself growing more and more ill as he read through the file. In fact, he visited the washroom shortly after and found himself kneeling over a toilet, heaving for breath, only to forget that he didn’t lock the stall behind him before diving for the bowl. It was actually Kyungsoo who caught him in that position, and Kyungsoo who stood and watched as Jongin’s back shakily moved up and down, and Kyungsoo who stared back when Jongin slowly turned around and realized he wasn’t alone in the men’s bathroom on the ninth floor where their division worked.

And maybe, if the situation were different, and it was a normal day, a “normal” case, Kyungsoo would have taken the opportunity to fire off a few quick blows about Jongin having a weak stomach, about how his balls were so soft they might as well be made of Play-doh, about how the end of his tie was now soaked in toilet water from where it dangled off of his neck and into the bowl. But instead, Kyungsoo said nothing, merely stepping aside to let Jongin have access to the sinks so he could clean himself up before getting back to work. Because Kyungsoo had the same file dropped onto his desk, and Kyungsoo _knew_. And, after so many years of working by Jongin’s side, it didn’t take a genius to know how his partner would react.

They had washed up, side-by-side, in mutual silence, scrubbing at their hands furiously as if it would rid them of the burden of the transgressions they were now aware of. Their usual banter would return less than an hour later, when Jongin would get his toilet-water-stained tie clipped in the elevator door when trying to catch the going-up lift that Kyungsoo happened to be in. But in that moment, catching glimpses of each other’s steely composure through their reflections in the bathroom mirror, the silence was almost oddly comforting, conveying a shared, solemn understanding of the circumstances they would soon be faced with.

It was probably the last time in recent weeks that Jongin remembers Kyungsoo being nice to him. In the current moment, his partner was making some snide comment to Agent Park about Jongin always being spaced out during important briefings. His spaced-out ears could, surprisingly, still detect that much.

“Be _nice_ , Kyungsoo,” Agent Park admonishes lightly, no real bite behind his words. Jongin almost scoffs. Of course Agent Park wouldn’t refer to Kyungsoo using formal titles. The two of them apparently go way back, and if Agent Park hadn’t taken a preference to playing human chess via earpiece with the agents he commanded, he probably would have become Kyungsoo’s partner instead.

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “I’m just out here trying not to die before Christmas, Chanyeol.”.

“You have six whole months until then,” Jongin decides to cut in. “I’m sure you can get creative and find a method that doesn’t involve me. Surprise me.”

“Will you two _please_ -” Agent Park- _Chanyeol_ starts, but then stops himself, sighing when he realizes this isn’t going to go anywhere. If the working dynamic between his two top agents hasn’t improved in the last seven years, it was unlikely to make leaps and bounds now.

“As I was saying. We believe our best point of entry is the wife, Mrs. Im. She’s more sociable than her husband and more likely to reciprocate, emotionally, upon engagement. Based on personality metrics and overall presentation, the department believes that _Jaesung_ will appeal to her more. Therefore, Jongin, you will mainly be tasked with building a rapport with Mrs. Im, and, by consequence, Mr. Im, too.”

Jongin smirks at that, wide and lazy. Because he’s a sucker for self-indulgence, he lolls his head over to gauge Kyungsoo’s reaction and, as expected, the other man is currently looking at Chanyeol like he could strangle him at any second. Maybe using the tie as a garrote.

“Are you _serious_.” Kyungsoo deadpans, shooting a glare over at his partner. “Why am I always tasked with secondary engagement? As _backup_?”

It’s subtle, but Jongin catches the way Chanyeol’s eyelids flutter slightly, as if he’s holding himself back from rolling them. “You’re not _backup_ , Kyungsoo. Your efforts will be focused on gathering intel and concrete evidence that doesn’t come straight from the suspects themselves. Jongin may be primary engagement, but it’s what _you_ find that helps nail them in court when we finally have enough to arrest them.”

Kyungsoo straightens a little at that, but the frown on his face remains. “And what makes _Jaesung_ so fit for the role?” he grumbles under his breath.

Chanyeol sighs, tugging at the tie around his neck, probably in an attempt to loosen it, but the way it’s been previously tied causes the knot to tighten instead. Jongin bites back a snort.

“Well, based on prior intel, Mrs. Im has a shown a propensity for engaging in extramarital affairs with,” Chanyeol actually has the audacity to shuffle through his notes for this, “ _tall, handsome, virile, of a seemingly-fertile age younger than her own -_ ”

Jongin preens his feathers at the same time Kyungsoo opens his mouth to protest, but then Chanyeol raises a finger to halt whatever bile he’s readying to squawk in his direction, finishing off his impromptu character study with “- _but also appears to lack signs of immediate intelligence._ ”

Kyungsoo actually doubles over in laughter so hard that he rolls off the couch. It’s a good thing that the parlor that they’re in is carpeted, because the man had decided to change into a pair of black shorts before tonight’s meeting and somehow lands knees-first on the floor. Meanwhile, Jongin is stupified, stuck between telling Kyungsoo to _fuck off_ and telling Chanyeol to tell Minseok that he and the rest of the psychometrics team are absolutely, positively, _full of shit **-**_

“Wait,” Kyungsoo manages to gasp out in between peals of laughter, wiping away tears that have leaked out from the corners of his eyes. “So you’re telling me that the suspect has a thing for _himbos_?”

Jongin’s frown deepens at the insinuation. Kyungsoo falls into another fit of uncontrollable wheezing on the floor. Chanyeol’s lips are twisted, but whether out of professionalism or just trying to spare his feelings, Jongin can’t tell. Before he can figure out a way to defend himself, Kyungsoo is heaving himself back up onto the sofa, one exposed thigh pressed against the cushion next to Jongin to give himself a boost. Jongin’s eyes flicker down to the offending flesh, wanting to grab ahold of it and shove it out of his vicinity as hard as he can.

“Aw, cheer up, _husband dear_ ,” Kyungsoo singsongs, mirth teeming in his eyes. He situates himself upright. “Everybody likes a good himbo.”

Having certainly met and exceeded his civility quota for the day, Jongin chooses then to take the high road by lobbing a fluffy decorative pillow at his partner’s face, which effectively dissolves the whatever professional atmosphere there was left for the rest of the briefing, as the two agents start cursing at each other while occasionally whomping each other with the sectional cushions like they’re embittered thirteen-year-old siblings and not the aces of their division. It takes about ten minutes for Chanyeol to regain control of the room, by which then he shortens whatever else he had to say down to a five minute pod speech along the lines of _this is the abort passphrase, this is the panic signal, Jongdae will do his best to monitor your whereabouts so please keep your comms on, check-ins are every other Wednesday at 2300 hours, and for the love of God, **behave yourselves**._

It’s not until Chanyeol is making his way through the foyer to the front door that he turns again to face the two. “Oh. And one more thing.” He makes sure to make stern eye contact with the both of them. Jongin’s hair is sticking up in all different directions, and Kyungsoo’s shirt is now missing its top button, shorts hiked up unevenly on his thighs. If Chanyeol didn’t know any better - as in, if he hadn’t bore witness to the incident that resulted in their current state of disarray - then, well, he might have _known better._

“You two need to work on your act,” he states, crossing his arms.

“Whatever do you mean?” Kyungsoo lilts from beside Jongin, all sickeningly, mockingly sweet. Jongin wants to smack the cheeriness out of him, but he’s worried that Chanyeol might make good on his chokehold threat if he follows through with it.

Chanyeol, for the umpteenth time that evening, rolls his eyes. “The standing impression I have of your marriage, _and the one that others will surely have too_ , is that it is entirely unconvincing. The crucial balance of this operation rests on how believable your relationship is to the people around you.” He sighs. “You two need to invest more effort into your roles as they pertain to each other. From the moment you wake up tomorrow, you are now _Jaesung_ and _Daewon_ \- two freshly wedded, starry-eyed lovebirds who never left the honeymoon phase. Start acting like it.”

Jongin bristles, glancing over at Kyungsoo, whose lips are twisted into a thin line.

“And how do you suppose we do that?”

“Smile at each other. Be warm. Show that you have chemistry.”

“I think we have _plenty_ of chemistry,” Kyungsoo retorts. Chanyeol doesn’t seem amused.

“I said _chemistry_ , not _nuclear reactor physics_.” He frowns. “Think of it like high school. Think of a well-maintained bunsen burner. Just...” He pauses, and the muscles in his face seem to ease a bit. “...channel that high reactivity you have toward each other and just...dial it down to a simmer.”

Kyungsoo whistles. “Someone’s been spending too much time in the weapons of mass destruction lab at the bureau.”

Chanyeol pointedly ignores Kyungsoo remark, bidding both of his agents goodnight before pulling away from the mansion in a stereotypically unmarked black sedan. The sun hasn’t fully gone down yet, meaning that there’s still the issue of finding something to eat for dinner, and seeing as they haven’t been here for half a day, the refrigerator is still as barren as if it had come straight from the store. Jongin takes it upon himself to order some delivery fried chicken with a side of fries and two cups of dipping cheese, because there’s no training officers or superiors lurking around to judge him now that he’s several hundred miles away from headquarters.

Well, no one except for Kyungsoo, but Jongin’s quite used to that by now. Jongin made sure to throw in an extra order of grilled thighs and coleslaw for his partner, and Kyungsoo, long past the point of inspecting whatever food Jongin ordered for him for poison, simply takes his portion and takes a seat at the opposite end of the counter. He still sends Jongin a look when he cracks open the top of the cardboard container and the smell of grease wafts out into the kitchen, but he opts not to say anything, peeling back the lid to his own meal instead.

Back before they were assigned to the undercover division, Jongin and Kyungsoo had spent many all-night stakeouts cramped in their car, which meant a lot of questionable dietary choices that would make their health coordinators weep. There was one night when Kyungsoo watched in abject horror as Jongin scarfed down an entire smoked beef sandwich in three minutes tops. It was a wonder that Jongin was still able to maintain his physique, his partner had mused as Jongin licked the residual juices off of his fingers. And Jongin had shrugged and muttered something about good genes, all while trying to figure out if the quick once-over Kyungsoo gave him from the passenger seat was just the incandescence of the streetlights starting to mess with his vision.

They eat in silence as the California night crawls in. Kyungsoo is at least nice enough to help throw out their garbage when they are done, and Jongin does one last check of the premises to ensure that all of the doors and windows are secured before following Kyungsoo up to the bedrooms on the third floor. They have yet to unpack their things, only having enough time to dump their suitcases in a pile in the middle of the hallway before Agent Park’s arrival.

There are three doors on either side, and one larger set of arched doors at the far end of the hall. Kyungsoo’s already grasping the handles of his bags by the time Jongin’s made it up the last step.

“So are we going to rock-paper-scissors for it, or what?”

Jongin stops himself behind Kyungsoo. He frowns. “Rock-paper-scissors for what?”

“The master bedroom.” Kyungsoo nods toward the doors opposite them at the end of the hall. They’ve been left ajar, giving them a glimpse into the spaciousness of the master suite.

“Aren’t we supposed to be married?” Jongin prods lightly, more out of jest than anything else. Kyungsoo, however, doesn’t seem to be amused, whipping his head around to shoot Jongin a glare.

“This isn’t one of your trashy _oh-no-there’s-only-one-bed_ manga plots,” Kyungsoo bites, pulling his suitcase protectively closer to him. “We’re only fake-married on paper. On _fake_ paper, for that matter.” He straightens himself, facing the doors once again. “Plus, you give off too much body heat and have a tendency to starfish over the entire mattress.”

Jongin suddenly recalls the time he accidentally forced Kyungsoo off of the motel bed they were sharing because he had, in fact, starfished his limbs out over the entire mattress, and Kyungsoo, not keen on pancaking on top of his partner, ended up scooting so far to the edge he had rolled over onto the the floor in his sleep. His frown deepens. “Then why does one of us have to get the master bedroom? Can’t we be _equals_ and each take one of the guest rooms?”

But Kyungsoo pays his proposition no mind, simply sticking his hand out in a fist with furrowed eyebrows. Jongin relents with a sigh, sticking his own fist out in return. Three seconds later, Jongin watches as Kyungsoo’s sulking, grumbly form retreats into the guest room furthest from them on the right, bags dragging on the floor behind him. The door slams shut shortly after.

Jongin only sighs, gathers his own belongings, and walks straight through the arched doors at the end of the hall. There’s no goodnights exchanged, and the lights in their Spanish mansion in the hills are out before midnight.

\-----

Jongin awakens to the sound of his shower running.

The master suite that he won last night came with its own bathroom, which was so ridiculously big and glossy that he was pretty sure entire music videos could be filmed in there, probably _have_ been filmed in there before. There was a bathtub that could double as a two-person jacuzzi, and a large sliding-glass-door shower that came with benches. Two of them. Two showerheads as well, so that no one could be a stream-hogger. Jongin soon realized, as he was power-washing the layers of caked-up sweat off of his body, that if he and Kyungsoo were _actually_ a married couple on an extended honeymoon, this house would truly fit their needs perfectly. He then proceeded to gag at the thought.

He rolls over in his four-post canopy bed, shoving his face deeper into the pillows. He’s not sure what time it is, but he knows they were given a “day off” to settle in and strategize how to make initial contact with the suspects without it being too suspicious. If he concentrates hard enough, he can let the trickle of the water stream hitting the marble shower tiles lull him back to sleep-

-Wait. Why is _his_ shower running?

When Jongin skids into the bathroom, Kyungsoo’s already toweling off his hair, with another towel wrapped neatly around his waist. His state of undress actually parallels Jongin’s, who was too lazy to dig out a pajama set to sleep in and instead opted to pass out in his boxers post-shower.

Kyungsoo looks him up and down. “Damn. I forgot how much of a trainwreck you look like in the mornings.”

Jongin‘s still sleepy, but he manages to contort his face muscles into somewhat of a scowl-like expression. “Why are you here?”

Kyungsoo pauses his towel-rubbing to mirror Jongin’s scowl. “Um, we’re on an assignment. Together. Remember? Snobby rich people generally being terrible and doing terrible things? Agent Park came by to drill us on our covers yesterday- Did you hit your head on a bedpost or something?-”

“- _No_ , I mean why are you _here_. In _my_ bathroom?”

“Oh.” Kyungsoo slings the towel he’s holding around his neck. Some water droplets still run down his chest. “Your bathroom is way bigger. Has better facilities. And the water pressure? Unmatched.” Jongin swears he hears him punctuate that last statement with a subtle moan, which only makes him wrinkle his nose in disgust.

“Wait. I shut the doors before I went to bed last night. Did you let yourself into my room while I was asleep?!” Jongin squawks.

Kyungsoo waves it off. “You say that as if I haven’t been forced to look at your dopey sleeping drool face ad infinitum in the past.”

“That’s not the _point_ ,” Jongin hisses, pinching the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. It was too early to be dealing with this. “It’s a blatant invasion of privacy. And it’s creepy. How was I supposed to know you wouldn’t murder me in my sleep or something?”

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “You’re being ridiculous, Jongin.”

“No, _you’re_ just being-”

His statement is cut off by a shrill, high-pitched alarm that continues to let out a screech every two seconds. Kyungsoo startles for a second while Jongin moves to cover his ears.

“What the _hell_ -”

“It sounds like the front gate alarm,” Kyungsoo replies, calmly, turning to the mirror and combing through the wet strands of hair with his fingers. “You should probably go and take care of it.”

“Me? Why me?! Why not _you?!_ ” Jongin shouts, although at some point he realizes that Kyungsoo can probably hear him fine at normal volume, and it’s just Jongin trying to overcompensate for the fact that he can barely hear himself. He tries lowering his palms a little, but the incessant shrieking proves to be too much for his brain to handle less than five minutes out of bed.

“I’m not dressed. You are.” Kyungsoo doesn’t even look at him. He parts his hair in the middle.

“I’m in my _underpants_ ,” Jongin seethes.

“That’s a step up from being naked, which I very much am underneath this towel. Now, go see what the commotion is about before we get robbed or attacked or made or something.”

Jongin opens his mouth to fire back, but gears in his head seem to finally start turning at Kyungsoo’s words. He pauses. “Should I bring my gun?”

Kyungsoo shoots him a look, but then returns to grooming himself in the mirror. “Depends. Are you going to change into some real pants beforehand, or are you just going to announce to the entire neighbourhood that you’re _packing_?”

Jongin wrinkles his nose, again. He ends up pulling on a pair of jeans and shoving his emergency pistol in the back pocket, just to be safe, before heading outside with a grumble. He hasn’t even brushed his teeth yet.

\-----

Even before noon, the California sun is unrelenting in its chokehold on the land it beats down on. Jongin belatedly wonders if he should have put on sunscreen before heading outside, with the way he could probably fry the breakfast they have yet to eat on the back of his shoulder blades. The shrieking of the alarm gets louder as he approaches the front gate, but even from afar, he can see who the culprit actually is, and subsequently makes the decision to leave his gun on the porch steps before making his way down the rest of the driveway.

The rubber kickball makes a rattling sound as it strikes the metal grating before rolling back to the tiny pair of feet that kicked it there. Jongin frowns as he steps up to the gate, sticking his nose in between two of the bars, wincing slightly at the screeching noise now blaring directly in both of his ears.

“Hey, kid,” he starts, trying to make his best _angry, disgruntled, disapproving adult face_ at the young boy that’s staring back at him. “Do you not hear the alarm going off?”

The kid shrugs, hands in the pockets of his bermuda shorts, rolling the ball back and forth between his feet. He’s standing dead in the middle of the street, and Jongin does a quick check to see if there are any cars coming. There are none, and come to think of it, Jongin can’t remember the last actual road they traveled on yesterday before turning into the gated community. They’re that isolated from general civilization, he thinks. From other normal, everyday people, whose kids aren’t donning child-sized Rolexes on their wrists.

The sun hits the face of the kid’s watch when he turns his wrist a little, and the glare hits Jongin dead in the eye. He grimaces. “Isn’t it a bit unsafe for you to be playing in the middle of the road? There could be cars, you know.”

At that, the kid takes his hands out of his pockets and scoops up his kickball. He squints up at Jongin, probably because Jongin is taller and the sun is getting in everyone’s eyes, but Jongin can still make out the unamused twist of the kid’s lips.

He gets another shrug, again. “My mom just said we’ll sue them so hard their future grandkids will owe us money, too.”

Before Jongin can even react, the kid is already taking off down the street, leaving Jongin’s jaw hanging limply from its joint. He’s not entirely sure what universe he’s gotten himself into, but if one thing’s for sure, he’s already ready to go _home_.

Unfortunately, the keypad controls for the gate alarm are located on the _outside_ side of the gate, so Jongin has to spend a few minutes hitting the release button to let himself out of his own front yard before he can finally get to the security console. Upon which, of course, he forgets the override code, and, wanting to avoid yelling for Kyungsoo to come help him (he wouldn’t hear the end of it for the rest of the week if he did), he finds himself having to phone Jongdae instead. Except, _of course_ Jongdae puts him on hold for another five minutes, even though there’s no reason a senior intelligence analyst like him to be _needing_ to put _anyone_ on hold, much less his _own agent_ , but Jongin knows it’s just an excuse for Jongdae to force him to listen to selections from his ultimate girl group playlist. Coded the program himself just so that Jongin gets redirected to whatever song he left off on every time he has to call the bail-out number for nonessential things.

By the time Jongin finally gets the alarm to stop screaming at him, the tops of his shoulders and the back of his neck feel like scorched earth. He hunches over a bit, letting the droplets of sweat roll off of his forehead and onto the pavement. He should have worn sunscreen, he thinks, _again_. Should have worn a _shirt_ -

_“Well, aren’t you a tall drink of water on such a hot summer’s day.”_

There’s a voice behind him. Low and smooth, with thickness in the cadence, but lacks the gruffness around the edges like that of his partner or his handler. Still, it holds the same weight, the same domineering, _listen to me_ aura that commands one to direct their attention to the person who wields it.

Jongin turns around, slowly, and the first thing he sees is a slender pair of feet tucked into a pair of white espadrilles. His eyes naturally follow up the person’s ankles, up their legs - one hidden by the skirt of the sundress they’re wearing, the other exposed via the slit up the side - up the dress’s bodice, tightly cinched at the waist with woven golden thread, and up past lightly glimmering collarbones and up until he reaches the person’s face. _Her_ face.

The one that’s printed on the photograph paper-clipped to the file that’s shoved in the back of his suitcase.

And even obscured by the shadows cast on her features by the burgundy sunhat she’s wearing, half-hidden behind a pair of aviators with diamond-encrusted temples, Jongin can still make out the smirk playing on her lips and the twinkle in her eye. And so he immediately straightens, assuming his cover persona in an instant. Clearing his throat, shoving his hands in his back pockets, puffing his chest out a bit. Trying to appear taller, more composed, tilting his head so that the sun hits all the right angles of his jaw, the chiseled planes of his body. “And good morning to you too, _Miss_ ,” he croons, purposefully.

She takes a step forward, but not before lowering her glasses to the bridge of her nose. Just enough so that Jongin can see she’s looking him straight in the eye, expecting him to crumble or waver, even if only for a subconscious moment. He firmly holds his ground.

“You must be the new neighbour,” she says, after some thoughtful silence. Her hands are clutched around a cream envelope, and the diamond studs on her baby pink acrylics splay light dispersion patterns on the paper as she taps her fingers against the surface.

“Indeed, _we_ are,” Jongin corrects lightly, trying to gauge if the mention of an additional party fazes her in the slightest. As expected, it doesn’t, because she takes another step toward him, seemingly still pleased with his answers. From this closed distance, Jongin can tell that, even without the heels, they would stand at about the same height, give or take a centimeter or two. She’d definitely have some headspace over Kyungsoo. Her hair is dark, permed so that it falls in soft waves that end just beyond her shoulders. There’s not a wrinkle in sight, no puffiness or lines that explicitly give away her age, which Jongin finds to be the most surprising, given that she has at least a good twelve years over him. Overall, she looks like she walked straight off of a _Forbes_ cover, all sleek lines, not a single one drawn out of place.

Her lips - painted a cherry red, intentionally faded at the edges into a gradient effect - press together into another gentle smirk. “Aren’t you going to introduce yourself?” It’s posed as a question, but Jongin can hear the challenge in her words.

He extends his hand toward her. “ _Yang Jaesung_ ,” he recites, smoothly.

She lets her eyes traverse down the length of his arm, over the muscles and valleys underneath the taut skin, before she takes his hand in hers and gives it a firm shake. “ _Im Haejoo_ ,” she replies, pleased.

Jongin grins. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Haejoo.” He doesn’t let go, and she doesn’t either, so their intertwined hands naturally fall to hang in the space between them. “It’s nice to meet someone else in the neighbourhood who hails from a similar background,” he imparts, casually, reverting to his mother tongue to deliver the statement. He can almost feel the delicate shift in the air, and if possible, the woman in front of him immediately appears to be more at ease, offering him a warm smile. He can hear Minseok and the rest of the psychometrics team furiously patting themselves on the back at headquarters from hundreds of miles away.

“Well then,” she says, slipping effortlessly into Korean, and the space they’re sharing suddenly feels more intimate, like they’re exchanging a hushed secret that no one else on their empty street can hear. She then looks Jongin up and down, taking her time to let her eyes wander over and ingest his entire form, and Jongin almost lets himself preen in front of her (for the sake of maintaining his cover, of course) when he feels a fingertip being placed underneath his chin.

Once she’s grasped his attention, Haejoo presses upward against the skin ever so slightly, forcing him to tilt his head back and look down at her through his eyelids. The tip of the acrylic digs into the flesh underneath his jaw.

“Isn’t that Haejoo- _noona_ to you, then?”

If this was any other situation where Jongin didn’t have a decade’s worth of training and experience behind him, he might have choked. He thinks that there’s some primitive part of his brain that still has the _instinct_ to choke, because deep in his lungs, or somewhere in his trachea, he feels his breath hitch. But he tries to hide it, to reel it in, and prays that Haejoo didn’t sense that imperceptible _tick_ through where her finger is pressed into his skin.

It takes a few more seconds than he would have liked, but he’s able to steel himself, getting his head back with the program. “My apologies, then, _noona_.” The words tumble out of his mouth, and he hopes it sounds convincing enough, _suave_ enough to regain control of the situation.

To his luck, Haejoo seems to relent in her sudden conquest, and just smiles, satisfied. She releases her hold on Jongin, and the latter has to resist the urge to put some space back in between them. _Stand your ground, goddammit_.

But Haejoo keeps smiling at him, plucking her sunglasses off of her nose and folding them underneath her arm. “You’re cute, Jaesung-ah.”

The blush that tints his cheeks is due to the nature of character he is playing and not because he’s still disarmed from whatever just happened, Jongin tells himself. Or maybe it’s just the heat. He wonders if he’s on the verge of heat stroke. “Ah, thank you _noona_ ,” he somehow manages to get out.

It is then that she extends the envelope from earlier out to him, like it’s some prize he’s being given for passing some kind of test. Haejoo still has that smile on, gentle but knowing.

“Come over tomorrow evening for dinner. Everyone in the neighbourhood will be there. Consider it our welcome to you and your wife.”

“Husband,” Jongin corrects, again. Still, Haejoo doesn’t falter. Instead, her eyes seem to regain that twinkle.

“It’s our personal treat, courtesy of me and my husband,” she continues. “Will we be seeing you there?”

Jongin pauses for a second, pretending to think about it, before plucking the invitation from her hand, offering his own charming smile. “I look forward to seeing you again, _noona_.”

They part ways after that, her heading back up the street in the direction of her villa, and Jongin walking back up his driveway after closing the gates. He doesn’t expect to have Kyungsoo waiting for him in the doorway when he reaches the front porch.

He whistles as Jongin walks up the steps. “Look at you, reeling in the ladies. Didn’t think dangling yourself like a slab of meat would be your best angle of approach but, hey, to each his own I guess.”

He’s upgraded to a bathrobe in the time Jongin’s been gone. He’s also twirling Jongin’s pistol in his fingers, which makes the latter scowl. So Jongin swipes the gun out of his grasp while simultaneously shoving Haejoo’s invitation against Kyungsoo’s chest. The man is still somewhat wet from the shower, Jongin concludes, about a second too late, and ends up having to wipe the dampness off on his jeans as he stalks further into the house.

“Just tell Park that we’ve made initial contact.”

\-----

When Agent Park receives the news that they’ve somehow managed to engage with the suspects within 24 hours of moving in, their handler is heavily pleased. Jongin is quick to take credit, relishing in the praise he’s given, despite Kyungsoo protests of “ _he just took his shirt off and flexed his abs, big whoop, we could have gotten a Hollister model to do the same and probably saved some money in the process!”_ echoing in the background.

Of course, that means that the natural next step is to actually attend the dinner party in question. They’ve been provided with some formal attire, courtesy of the agency, but Haejoo’s invitation had stated that this would be a casual affair. So Jongin opts for a green floral shirt tucked into a pair of crisp white jeans, hair gelled up into a messy coif, the ends hanging down in a way that frames his forehead, drawing attention to the sharpness of his eyes. Kyungsoo, on the other hand, first came out wearing jeans with an open red button-up over a black t-shirt. Jongin was almost mortified.

“Would it _kill_ you to put in some effort for once?” he gripes, leaning against the railing like he had been for the last thirty minutes waiting for Kyungsoo to emerge.

“What do you mean _effort_?” Kyungsoo rebuffs. He spins around in a circle with his arms out to let Jongin have a good look. “What’s wrong with my outfit?”

“We’re supposed to be expensive socialites. You look like that weird kid from high school who eats his own boogers and plays Nintendogs on his Gameboy during lunch instead of socializing with other people.”

“And what’s wrong with Nintendogs?”

Jongin scowls. “Can’t you just dress in something more your age? More _our_ age?”

“Well _pardon me_ and my _geriatric_ fashion tastes, but not all of us are out here trying to look like _mansluts_ whoring ourselves out to the neighbourhood women like we’re actively on the market for sugar mommies.” Kyungsoo pointedly gestures to where Jongin had left the top three buttons of his shirt open to show off his collarbones and a tasteful glimpse of man tiddy.

He tugs the lapels of his blouse closer together, suddenly sheepish. “It’s part of my M.O.”

“It’s a cheap trick,” Kyungsoo bites. “Used only to mask the fact that your breath stunk when you were engaging with the suspect yesterday.”

Jongin frowns at the reminder. “Can you _just_ \- Go into my closet and pick out a shirt from there. _Please?_ I don’t want you ruining things with your _lackluster appearance_ before I’ve even had the chance to establish a rapport.”

Jongin realizes about a second too late the unintended harshness of his words, but before he can even think about backtracking, he’s made aware he’s struck a nerve, judging by the way Kyungsoo’s jaw sets. It’s subtle, but he also seems to shrink a bit, a clear contrast to the bravado the man had displayed not a moment earlier.

“Right,” the latter sneers, wrenching his hands. “I’ll go make sure I don’t make _hinder your sterling performance_ , then, _partner_.”

Jongin opens his mouth to call after him, but Kyungsoo disappears into the bedroom before the words can come out. The door shuts behind him with a pointed _click._

\-----

There’s more bodies around him than he’s used to.

The ninth floor of headquarters is crowded and hectic in its own right, but this is a different type of chaos - bustling and vibrant, sounds of lively chatter and ice tinkling in champagne glasses, the air seemingly dipped in Tiffany diamonds and Swarovski crystals. Cater waiters rush around refilling glasses and serving food on polished platters, and there’s a live lounge jazz band playing music in the parlor.

The Im’s really do reside in the largest mansion in the neighbourhood, Jongin comes to realize. There’s probably just under a hundred people in attendance, and yet the walls of their house seem to stretch on for miles with no end in sight. The roof over his head seems to reach for the moon that hangs the night sky, and by his best judgement, probably holds a good two extra stories over his own. He’s in the midst of a sea of people, but he doesn’t feel claustrophobic. Everyone is speaking over each other, at each other. And all of the people around him seem to be _pleasantly_ drunk - not plastered or incapacitated, but just enough that the words roll off their tongues with ease, that the laughter escapes effortlessly without any hesitance or preoccupation.

Oh, and also quite horny, Jongin concludes. Not in a perverse or distasteful way, but he’s been subtly propositioned on at least three separate occasions now, by women and men alike, and sometimes by both of them - a happily married couple, to his surprise - at the same time. Jongin wonders if being stupid rich just makes it easier to act on how horny you are, because he thinks he’s landed in somewhat of a latent swingers community for people with exorbitantly plush pockets.

He’s never had to speak more English in his life. He’s somehow been lucky enough to end up on a team with people who can still understand him whenever he slips into his native language to explain something, but of course, the locations he’s sent out to usually require different of him. Still, he has yet to gain a 100% grasp on the language, so it’s easy for him to drone out the bulk of certain conversations, like he’s doing right now. He’s in the middle of what he thinks is another thinly veiled attempt to get in his pants when the mention of a certain name catches his attention.

“- _Gosh_ , I guess what I’m trying to ask is - do you know if Daewon would be open to certain...arrangements?”

Immediately, Jongin’s eyes whip back to the woman in front of him. “Pardon?”

“Your husband,” she says. “I had the pleasure of meeting Daewon earlier, and I was wondering if you happened to know if he would be open to seeing other people outside of your... _household_.” She clears her throat, suddenly looking off in another direction. “He’s quite the looker, you know.”

Jongin’s eyes naturally follow her gaze to where it lands on Kyungsoo, who’s currently being chatted up by another gentleman at the other end of the ballroom. And _indeed_ , Kyungsoo has managed to clean up quite nicely in the short time Jongin left him alone before leaving the house. He had picked out one of Jongin’s looser blouses, white with thin black stripes and slightly flared cuffs, tucked into a pair of his own black dress pants, ones that hug his thighs and show off his greatest assets. The blouse being loose is the key word here, because if it’s already loose when Jongin wears it, then it almost dwarfs Kyungsoo - but he makes the extra room look like home, the fabric hanging off of his frame so elegantly, neckline cut low enough to showcase where he had dusted some highlighter onto his sternum earlier, the skin glistening under the light of the chandelier.

He was dressed to kill. The entire room could eat its heart out, Jongin included.

But instead, he schools himself into nonchalance, falling back into his cover persona. “You would have to ask him,” he jokes, airily. “But I would go soon. It looks like you’re not the only one with eyes for him.”

“And who is it we are having eyes for?”

When Jongin turns around, Haejoo is standing behind them, lips pulled into an easy smile. The skirt of her burgundy evening gown drapes onto the floor like a curtain, trailing off into a train behind her. Red must be this woman’s color, Jongin notes, taking in the way that her nail color from yesterday has been swapped out for a scarlet cream shade that matches the color of her lips.

The woman he was originally speaking with briefly exchanges a few words with her - a semblance of a greeting, he thinks - before scurrying away, probably off to refill her glass or try her luck with someone else. It leaves Jongin and Haejoo alone together, and said woman doesn’t hesitate to slide into the space that’s been left vacant in her wake. Jongin immediately smirks, flicking his charm back on.

“It’s so good to see you, _noona_ ,” he says, easing into Korean once again, now that it’s only the two of them. “You look beautiful tonight. Like you must do every night,” he teases. “I wonder where your husband must be, letting you run around like this. If he’s not careful, someone else might just snatch you up.” He steps toward her and lays a gentle hand on her arm. Haejoo doesn’t retreat, and Jongin thinks he’s hit the jackpot.

“And aren’t you laying it on thick?” she muses, to which Jongin just grins. “Speaking of husbands, would you and Daewon like to join me and my husband for a nightcap later this evening after everyone’s left?” She takes it upon herself to mirror his position, resting her hand tenderly on his forearm.

Jongin closes in. “Oh? A private afterparty? Just for us?” he lilts. “Are you trying to get into my good graces, _noona_?”

Lips pressed into yet another knowing smile, there’s a moment where Haejoo’s eyes flicker away from him, but Jongin isn’t entirely sure what to make of the subtle gesture.

“Something of that kind,” she says.

\-----

Im Eunseok is not who Jongin had imagined him to be.

Next to his wife, he’s about as fascinating as a loaf of stale bread. He had come to the party dressed in black from head to toe, and probably could have been mistaken for one of the cater waiters from earlier if he had added a black apron to his ensemble. He remains stoic, seemingly allergic to facial expressions, lips hung in a perpetual half-frown. There are some wrinkles around his mouth and jaw, and hints of grey close to his hairline that his hairdresser must have missed from the last visit. According to his dossier and his wife’s stories, Eunseok was a wrestling star in a previous lifetime, which Jongin thinks is evident with the amount of muscle bulk the man carries up top. He’s said all of two sentences since the four of them settled in the kitchen shortly after the last guest had left for the night, silently sipping scotch from his glass, presence looming, but never toeing into the spotlight.

Meanwhile, Haejoo speaks with the unbridled energy of a Broadway center, excitedly recounting tales of her dazzling youth, the woman she was before meeting Eunseok, and how much she enjoys her life as it is now. She tips her head back whenever she laughs, little intoxicating bursts of vibrance and colour, and never fails to rest her hand on Kyungsoo’s thigh when reeling herself in afterward.

Yes. Because somehow it’s Kyungsoo and Haejoo sat next to each other on adjacent barstools, thighs pressed together underneath the counter, elbows brushing whenever they reach for their glasses. Jongin was relegated to a stool by himself on the opposite side, a front row seat to the scene unfolding before him. Eunseok himself was sequestered to his own side of the square kitchen island, apparently unbothered by the fact that his spouse is about halfway into another man’s lap. _His fake husband’s lap._

This wasn’t covered in the protocol. It had always been assumed that Jongin would hit it off with Mrs. Im, but at some point along the way and _for no apparent reason that he could discern_ , the tables had turned, and Haejoo had shooed him off in favor of shooting twinkly eyes at Kyungsoo. Even the three extra buttons he had lost on his shirt weren’t enough to bring her back around.

He’s not sure how he should be acting. Minseok hadn’t written a way for him to navigate this situation. It was always that Jaesung would be the unabashed flirt, and Daewon would be the mild-mannered one. But is it supposed to work the other way around? Is Jongin- _Jaesung_ supposed to just play along?

Jongin isn’t sure how he’s supposed to be acting, so he chooses to pout into his half-empty glass, because that seems perfectly like it’s within his purview to do so at the moment. Meanwhile, Kyungsoo is laughing at something Haejoo is saying, all deep and full-bodied, cheeks rounded and eyes crinkling upward. It dawns upon Jongin that he can’t remember the last time he’s seen Kyungsoo so at ease, since he’s usually snapping at him for something or the other. He’s swirling the liquid in his glass with calculated flicks of his wrist, little bubbles floating to the top of his drink and popping at the surface.

“No, no, I’m the one who does all the cooking in the house,” he says, taking a sip from his champagne.

“Aish, that’s no way to be living!” Haejoo retorts, sending a pointed look Jongin’s way. He knows she’s teasing, but there’s still the slightest hint of acidity in her eyes. Jongin almost shrinks. “Jaesung-ah, you should be helping your dear husband out more. You can’t expect him to be serving you all the time, now can you?.”

“Ah, _noona_ , take it easy on him,” Kyungsoo mollifies. He rests his hand on her arm, and Jongin finds himself zeroing in on the placement. “Really, I’m okay with it. The last time Jaesung tried to bake something for my birthday, he almost ended up poisoning me.” Kyungsoo delivers that last line with a knowing look over the brim of his glass. “Didn’t you, _Jaesung-ah_?”

Jongin knows exactly what incident Kyungsoo is referring to, albeit having left out many crucial details in an attempt to turn one of their earliest tiffs into a fake couple’s anecdote. They had only been partners for a few months at the time, and Jongin, in keeping his contact with Kyungsoo outside of work entanglements minimal, had learned from Jongdae that he had missed Kyungsoo’s birthday, and that everyone else in the department had pitched in to buy him a cake (which Jongin had helped himself to three slices from without ever reading the writing in frosting at the top). Jongin was apparently the only one who hadn’t acknowledged him, and Kyungsoo, being the professional that he was, hadn’t bothered to make a big deal out of it, but Jongdae had mentioned that the situation wasn’t helping with his already dilapidated opinion of his newly assigned partner.

So Jongin hastily swiped some brownies the next morning from a glass tray that had mysteriously appeared in his apartment fridge, leaving a note to his then-roommate that he’d pay him back for whatever he stole later. He passed them off to Kyungsoo in his cubicle, and the latter had almost seemed touched by the belated gesture. Unfortunately, Jongin’s roommate at the time was a bit of a stoner (how he had ended up sharing a roof with a law enforcement agent was beyond Jongin), and the brownies that were in the fridge weren’t exactly _normal_ brownies, and it took the combined efforts of Jongin, Jongdae, _and_ Minseok to cover up Kyungsoo’s off-kilter, spaced-out behavior before Jongin could get the chance to drive his partner home after work. Agent Park had put two-and-two together right around the point Kyungsoo was caught standing on top of a table in the break lounge mumbling the lyrics to TWICE’s “Cheer Up” into a plastic fork, but luckily he had opted to keep his mouth shut. _Less paperwork that way_ , he had explained to Jongin while the man was preoccupied with yanking Kyungsoo off the table by his ears. _Director Bae is already a busy woman_ , he reasoned. _And I happen to like my job._

This was the start of Kyungsoo inspecting whatever food Jongin offered him for suspicious substances. And Jongin, thoroughly apologetic, had made it up to him by buying him that expensive pilates membership, to which he was still paying for to this day, because Kyungsoo is an asshole like that and never bothered to switch out the credit card information after the first-year discounted trial rate. Jongin is lucky that he’s friends with an IRS agent who helps him (somewhat illegally) file a return on it when he has to do his taxes.

Presently, Jongin’s pout only deepens. “I only wanted to do something nice for you,” he says, and hopes it comes out as pitifulas it’s supposed to. Kyungsoo quietly snorts, sipping from his glass again.

“Ah, I’m only teasing you, Jaesung-ah,” Haejoo offers, but Jongin still detects a hint of contention in her tone. “But still, you should be nicer to Daewon-ah. He’s such a lovely man to be around. Many would consider you to be quite fortunate, you know.” She beams at Kyungsoo then, soft and easy, and it makes Jongin want to gag.

“Am I really, though?” Originally sarcastic in his head, Jongin forces the words through his teeth so that it plays off like a joke, and the entire room laughs. Still, through it all, Kyungsoo somehow manages to shoot a caustic glare at his partner without raising further suspicion. It’s practically a god-given talent at this point.

“Yes, quite,” she hums. “I wish I could keep someone as handsome as him in my kitchen twenty-four-seven.”

Jongin’s in the middle of deliberating whether or not it’s impolite to tip back the remainder of his glass in front of everyone when Kyungsoo’s voice cuts through. “Well, I wouldn’t be able to agree to twenty-four hours, but how about two of them tomorrow night?”

 _Oh._ Well that was unexpected. And unequivocally forward. Jongin’s focus snaps to Kyungsoo in an instant, eyes glued to where his partner’s fingertips are resting on top of Haejoo’s thigh. Everything feels thicker, but in a more claustrophobic way, almost suffocating. He feels like he’s third wheeling. Fourth wheeling, if you count Eunseok, who’s been lurking in the background during all of this, so quiet that Jongin almost forgot that he existed. They’re like the two rusty old training wheels left in the wake of a runaway tandem bicycle.

“Are you saying that you’d like to come by again tomorrow?” Haejoo poses.

“Well, I was thinking you could come by my place instead,” Kyungsoo counters, fingertips lightly drumming against the skin of Haejoo’s thigh. Jongin’s head is reeling, trying to keep up with the sudden pace things are moving at. He now wishes he drank less throughout the course of the evening, because the characteristic smooth timbre of Kyungsoo’s voice is melting inside his addled brain so much that it’s messing with his ability to concentrate on the details of an improvised plan his partner is currently spitting out.

“Oh?” Haejoo presses, interest piqued. And so was Jongin’s, frankly.

Kyungsoo only hums, taking a sip from his glass with his free hand, licking a stray drop of champagne off his bottom lip when he’s finished. “I could show you some tricks you can use in the kitchen so you won’t be bored when I’m not around.”

Jongin finds himself almost choking, but he’s able to keep it together at the last second. He absently wonders when Kyungsoo learned how to be this smooth, or if the latter always had it within him. He oddly feels like he’s been cheated out of something, but doesn’t get the chance to entertain the thought for long before Haejoo’s speaking again.

“Ah, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you two too much,” she says, taking a quick sip from her glass before pushing it off toward the center of the island. Kyungsoo merely waves the thought off.

“Nonsense. It would be my utmost pleasure to have you over.” He smiles. “And I’m sure Jaesung wouldn’t mind.” Kyungsoo turns his attention fully to Jongin then, probably for the first time since arriving that night. His eyes are unnaturally sharp. “Now would he?”

And Jongin isn’t entirely sure how he should be acting right now, a glass and a half of whiskey in, three extra buttons lost on his shirt and his head still lagging a few steps behind, but he does manage to croak out an _of course not, noona,_ and hopes it comes out as convincing as it’s intended to be.

\-----

“So let me get this straight. _Kyungsoo_ got the in with the suspect, and you were just sitting there like a dead fish the whole time?”

Upon returning from dinner at the Im’s, Jongin and Kyungsoo did the responsible thing of calling for an emergency check-in with their handler to update headquarters on their progress. Not that there was any _real_ emergency, of course, but simply out of the necessity of communicating that the circumstances had, well, _changed._

“It wasn’t as bad as you’re making it out to be,” Jongin argues, albeit quite weakly.

“It sounds pretty bad. You were kinda useless on the backup there, _Jingo_ ,” Jongdae quips.

Jongin’s not even sure why Jongdae is even on the call with them. None of the matters that are currently in need of being discussed concern him in any way, shape, or form, and yet he’s somehow managed to nose his way into this impromptu briefing, where he sits shoulder-to-shoulder with Agent Park, all smirks and unsolicited eyebrow wriggles.

Beside him, Kyungsoo snorts. “Not like I needed the backup, anyways,” he points out. Jongin opens his mouth to retort when Agent Park’s voice cuts through the crackly speaker of the laptop they’re huddled over.

“Will you two _please -_ ” Chanyeol starts, but then stops, probably because he doesn’t have the energy or the capacity to play mediator right now. It’s nearing four in the morning, and even through the degenerate screen quality of the government-issued secure communication device they’re using, Jongin can still see the bags forming underneath his handler’s eyes. He makes a mental note to get him a weighted blanket and a melatonin light for Christmas.

Eventually, the man just sighs. “Well, I’ll be the first one to admit that this isn’t how we envisioned things going. Quite the opposite, actually.” There’s some more silence as Chanyeol seems to mull everything over. “But it’s not necessarily unwelcome, per se.”

“So what does that mean for the investigation, then?” Kyungsoo asks. “For us?”

Chanyeol goes quiet for a bit longer, and then, “From here on out, I hereby state that Kyungsoo is now on primary engagement. That means that he will be responsible for establishing a rapport with Mrs. Im and gaining her trust, whereas Jongin will be focused on gathering secondary intel.”

Kyungsoo beams, immediately sitting taller and prouder in his chair, bowing his head slightly toward their handler to express his gratitude over the camera feed. Meanwhile, Jongin just squawks.

“ _What?!_ Oh for the love of- wait, Chanyeo- Agent Park, _sir, please,_ with all due respect, I think I’m perfectly capable of building a constructive relationship with Mrs. Im on my own-”

“-And I’m not doubting that capability here, _Agent Kim_ ,” Chanyeol admonishes sternly, effectively shutting Jongin up. “But the fact of the matter is, based on what you two are telling me has transpired, Kyungsoo seems to be more successful at provoking the type of enthusiastic response we’re looking for from Mrs. Im. And that’s the type of behavior we need to keep seeing from her in order to close out this case.”

Defenseless, Jongin simply deflates. For a second, out of the corner of his eye, he swears he sees Kyungsoo looking over at him, but he can’t quite discern the man’s affect, and figures now is not the time to try. If he isn’t careful, he thinks he might punch his partner square in the face if he looks at him for too long.

Chanyeol, at the very least, appears to be somewhat apologetic, even as he remains firm on his position. “It’s not about _you_ , agents. It’s about doing what’s best for the investigation, and doing what’s best for all of the people they’ve victimized, and the people they _will_ victimize in the future if they’re left to run free for any longer. And I would hope that you two - my best agents, need I remind you - would understand that, especially after so many years together on the job.”

And of course, Jongin understands. If not anything else, he’s a professional, and more than anyone, he understands that the hard work he puts into the job isn’t as much for him as it’s for the members of the public who he’s vowed to serve. He knows this, and at the end of the day, he knows what he has to do to bring justice to the people who are owed it the most.

It doesn’t mean that he has to like the way that things seem to be unfolding, though.

\-----

Jongin is in the middle of wrestling with the utility lighter when Kyungsoo emerges from the foyer. If not for the unmistakable click of his wing-tipped shoes against the marble, Jongin might not have noticed him entering the kitchen at all.

Kyungsoo whistles. “It’s taking you long enough. I was wondering where you’d disappeared off to. I hadn’t heard any cursing, whining, or moaning coming from any part of the property for the last two hours.” He hops up and perches himself on the countertop, letting his ankles swing back and forth over the edge. “Thought you might have drowned in the pool or something.”

Jongin merely rolls his eyes, not even sparing him a glance. “Well _one_ of us had to get things ready for your op tonight. Emphasis on _your_ op.” He huffs. “Why am I the one stuck doing this last-minute, anyway? What’s been taking _you_ so long?”

“I had to clean myself up,” Kyungsoo remarks, offhandedly. “What was it you once told me to do? Put in effort? Try to compensate for my _lackluster appearance_?”

Jongin winces at the reminder. There’s a lingering apology on the tip of his tongue that he figures should try to make its way out, so Jongin chooses then to look over at Kyungsoo. He takes in the man’s choice of attire for the evening - a cream sweater tucked into a pair of looser-fitting chestnut-colored pants, topped off with the pair of black oxfords that he heard from before. The clothing may be slightly out of season, but Kyungsoo manages to make it look timeless.

Of course, Kyungsoo easily catches onto Jongin’s not-so-subtle once-over, made obvious by the slow smirk easing its way across the lower half of his face. “I see my outfit has your approval this time,” he notes, raising a smug eyebrow.

The apology never sees the light of day. “So you had the time to go and develop fashion sense, but no time to help me set up?” Jongin scoffs. “She’ll be here any minute, you know. We don’t even have time to go over procedure at this point.”

“What procedure is there to go over?” Kyungsoo leans back on his palms. “It’s not like we’re ever given step-by-step instructions on how to do things, Jongin. It’s deep cover. We’ve probably done this over a dozen times, and what, _now_ you suddenly need hand-holding?”

Jongin pointedly ignores Kyungsoo’s remarks, biting back his tongue in favor of fiddling with lighter some more. Next to him, he hears Kyungsoo sigh before pushing himself off the counter. The clicking of heels against polished tile returns, growing noticeably fainter as the other man nears the exit.

“Some of us just prefer to follow protocol is all,” Jongin finally lets slip, unable to help himself, not bothering to see how the statement landed. “There’s a certain way that things are supposed to be done, you know.”

The clicking stops. When not dignified with a response, Jongin looks over to see Kyungsoo facing him, arms hanging at his sides, fingers curling into half fists. The look on his face is fairly unreadable, but Jongin does notice the other man’s tongue pressing into his cheek.

After a stretch of silence, Kyungsoo just exhales. “For your information, it was Minseok who advised me on my _fashion sense_ ,” he says. And then, “It’s nice to know that some of the people on this team actually have the decency to help others out when they need it.”

The words sting, but Jongin is quick to brush it off. He tries the trigger of the lighter again, to no avail. “ _Damn it!_ ” he curses, slamming the lighter down onto the counter.

“What are you even trying to do, anyways?” Kyungsoo questions, crossing his arms.

“I’m trying to light these stupid candles for your stupid romantic dinner date tonight.” He turns to his partner fully. “The lighter’s busted, in case you didn’t realize. I don’t suppose you have any matches on you.”

Instead of being given an answer, Kyungsoo just rolls his eyes, again, before crossing over to where Jongin’s standing at the counter. He shoves the other man to the side, and before Jongin even has a chance to protest or press further, he swiftly whips out his pocket taser, holding down the trigger and dipping the prongs into the candle so that the current ignites the wick. The flame glows a tall orange for a few seconds before receding back into a faint blue.

Jongin’s left speechless. As he’s left to ogle at what is, quite literally, his latest flaming failure, Kyungsoo simply tosses his taser onto the countertop and leaves the kitchen without another word, the tip still smoking from where charred bits of wick got onto the metal.

\-----

Kyungsoo’s idea of a date (that, by technical parameters, wasn’t really a date, given that they’re both supposed to be “married” to other people) was to invite Haejoo over so that he could teach her how to make dessert. Whatever happened to be on tonight’s menu wasn’t entirely of particular importance to Jongin, not when Kyungsoo had somehow managed to distract Haejoo enough so that she carelessly leaves her purse in their parlor, unattended, within five minutes of entering the house. As she’s promptly swept off into the kitchen with a tactful hand cradling the small of her back, Jongin swoops in on the opening.

He’s currently hunched over the chaise where Haejoo’s purse lies open. He had fished out her phone from her bag a few minutes earlier, and was now waiting for Jongdae to bypass all of the security measures via the wireless tap plugged into the charging port. Of course, that also means he has to be on comms with Jongdae in order to receive guidance, which, without fail, always brought its own joys.

 _“So, how does it feel to be relegated to backup for once?”_ Jongdae’s voice is so unerringly loud and chirpy in his left ear, it makes Jongin wonder why these earpieces never came with volume controls. _“You’re like, the-rest-of-the-Pussycat-Dolls to Kyungsoo’s Nicole Scherzinger.”_

Jongin ignores the observation. “How much longer before you’re in, Jongdae? This isn’t exactly a secure location.”

 _“Patience, young himbo.”_ Jongin scowls, and he swears he hears Jongdae snort over the line. _“What? I got the same file you guys did. I know your cover identities almost as well as you do. I especially liked the paragraph that described, in very exquisite detail, how she would most likely be attracted to men in possession of that ‘young, nubile body type’-”_

“Will you _stop_ -” Jongin hisses out. He does a quick check over his shoulder to see if he’s attracted any unwanted attention before turning back to the device in his hands. The only thing he sees on the screen is his own reflection staring back at him. He frowns.

_“I’m just saying, I find it really ironic that you, her ideal type on paper, were basically served up to her on a silver platter - okay, maybe aluminum because we’re on government funding - and instead she goes for not-you instead. You must have really done something to put her off.”_

“I didn’t even do anything!” Jongin squawks. “I barely even spoke to her three times before it was all _gaga-googoo_ over Kyungsoo. I wish I knew what happened.”

The screen finally lights up, to Jongin’s relief. He does a quick shoulder check again to ensure he’s still alone as Jongdae starts remotely launching applications and digging through the files stored on the device.

 _“How are things going over there, anyway?”_ Jongin watches as Jongdae scrolls through Haejoo’s camera roll. Nothing too damning so far, from what he can tell. _“What are those two lovebirds up to?”_

“Don’t know, don’t care.” To which Jongdae just snorts in his ear. “What?”

 _“Your tone says otherwise,”_ the analyst remarks. _“Now I’m no Minseok with his fifty-seven degrees in behavioral gymnastics, but I would say you sound kinda jealous, Jingo.”_

Jongin wrinkles his nose at the suggestion. “I’m not _jealous_ , Jongdae. You heard what Agent Park said. It’s what’s best for the investigation.”

Jongdae only hums. _“I don’t really think that’s what I was referring to._ ”

Before Jongin gets the chance to prod further, Jongdae swiftly changes the subject. _“Unfortunately, I’m not really seeing anything here that’s particularly incriminating. Looks like she knows how to cover her tracks.”_ Jongin hears Jongdae click his tongue a few times. _“However! I am seeing a lot of sync-and-delete patterns in her activity log, which makes me think that whatever she doesn’t keep on her phone, it’s probably resting on a personal computer somewhere.”_

“So that’s the next step then,” Jongin concludes. “To find her computer.”

 _“Bingo, Jingo.”_ Jongin watches as Jongdae restores Haejoo’s phone back to its natural working state, the screen going dark when the tap finally disengages. _“Once you locate her computer, just plug in the USB tap you’ve been given, and we’ll see if her hard drive turns up anything. If she’s hiding something, we’ll have to find it eventually.”_

Jongin disconnects with Jongdae shortly after that, tucking Haejoo’s phone back into her purse and trying to rearrange things so that they were exactly the way she left it. He then figures he should probably try to make his presence more known around the house, so as to not raise suspicion by disappearing for too long. So he makes his way down the hall, running a hand through his hair a few times to make himself appear more presentable. He’s about to round the corner into the kitchen when a burst of shared laughter makes him pause.

“Ah, _noona_ , that’s my husband you’re talking about,” he hears Kyungsoo chastise, but there’s no real bite behind his words. “But I guess it makes more sense now - I was wondering why you didn’t seem to pick up on the little crush he has on you.”

“Oh, believe me, I picked up on it,” she muses. “And I will admit, he made quite the strong first impression.” There’s a pointed pause then, and Jongin finds himself leaning in closer, pressing against the wall to steady himself.

“But, oh, I don’t know - he’s just so _cute_. Even when he was being so forward. I was quite flattered, don’t get me wrong, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I felt more of an urge to coddle him than- _well_ , I don’t know.” Another pause. “He’s quite the endearer. How do you not have the urge to just squeeze him until he pops?”

“Oh, believe me, the urge to squeeze is definitely there,” Kyungsoo says, somewhat through his teeth. Jongin isn’t sure whether he should snort or be offended.

There’s some more silence, and then Haejoo sighs. “I don’t know, Daewon-ah. As I grow older, it’s only natural that my taste in the finer things in life change and evolve as well.” There’s the clink of a glass being rested on the counter. “Men included, I suppose. A previous me would surely have been more tempted by a man like Jaesung-ah,” she chuckles.

Kyungsoo hums. “And as to now?”

It goes quiet again, and Jongin still can’t quite see what’s going on, but he does hear two clicks of stiletto heels against marble tile. “I prefer my men more refined. Soft-spoken. Gentlemanly. Charming.” Another click. “Someone who’s a bit more...grown.”

“Careful now, _noona_ ,” Kyungsoo chides. “You might hurt Jaesung’s feelings if you’re not too careful.”

Haejoo hums. “Well, it’s not like he’s here right now, is he?”

Jongin peers around the corner then, careful to remain mostly hidden behind the wall. He sees Kyungsoo with Haejoo at the far end of the counter, standing so close that they’re almost pressed together, exchanging quiet, steady breaths in their own little closed-off world. She has a hand laid on Kyungsoo’s upper bicep, almost at his shoulder, and Kyungsoo mirrors the placement with one careful hand wrapped around her waist, holding her tight. There’s two glasses lying near them on the marble countertop, contents half gone. _Dalgona coffee_ , Jongin deduces, each one topped off with a dollop of whipped cream.

Speaking of whipped cream- “Oh,” Kyungsoo starts, breaking the tension in the air unwittingly shared by the three of them. “You have a bit of something on your nose, _noona_.”

“Oh, do I?” Haejoo immediately pulls back her hand to wipe at it, abnormally flustered. “How embarrassing-”

Kyungsoo is quicker, though, using his free hand to stop her wrist in its tracks. “No, no, allow me.”

He then lifts his other hand to her chin, fingers holding it gently in place. They’re making eye contact, entranced with each other, and Jongin gulps, unsure of how exactly things ended up here, or why _he’s_ even here, unable to just walk away and leave the two of them to their privacy, like he probably should right about now. But instead he just watches, raptly, as Kyungsoo slowly leans in and licks the whipped cream off of her nose with his tongue. And he continues watching, dumbly, as Haejoo doesn’t even flinch, and instead tightens her hold on Kyungsoo’s bicep, letting her eyes fall shut and exhaling unsteadily, releasing the tension strung up around them that’s keeping them tied together in this slice of time. And Kyungsoo doesn’t back down, deliberately dragging out the moment, prolonging the time the two of them spend with their lips a breath away from each other, licking the remaining traces of the cream off his own plush lips on the precipice of the slow retreat. And maybe, just for a second, not the opportunity would ever arise for him to admit it - _maybe_ Jongin forgets how to breathe.

\-----

Jongin finds Kyungsoo outside on the back patio the next morning, said man silently staring out across the wide expanse of their complementary pool. The surface of the water remains pristine, neither of them ever having found the time to use it since their arrival. He quietly approaches from behind, mindful not to ruin the atmosphere too much. He comes bearing coffee, since he suspects that the other man hasn’t had the chance to have breakfast yet, judging by the lack of soiled pans and dishes in the sink.

“It’s not dalgona,” he offers, clearing his throat. He extends the mug to him. “But I’m sure it’ll do.”

Kyungsoo only glances at Jongin briefly before taking the mug from his outstretched hand. He still sniffs it once or twice before taking a tentative sip from it, and Jongin has to resist the urge to roll his eyes.

“So did you find anything on her phone?” he tosses over, quietly returning his gaze back to the pool.

Jongin sighs and sips from his own mug. “Not really. But Jongdae suspects that we might have some better luck with her computer, so I guess it’s on you to figure out how to get us into her house long enough so I can snoop around, lover boy.”

To that, Kyungsoo just snorts. He starts chuckling to himself, shaking his head. “Funny you should say that. We’ve been invited over for brunch next Sunday.” He takes another sip from his coffee. “Although, I think she wants me to help prepare it with her in the kitchen first.”

“Of course she does,” Jongin mutters.

Kyungsoo huffs, narrowing his eyes. “Is there a problem with that, _partner_?”

Jongin doesn’t know how to answer the question, not even sure if there is a good one that would explain the weird feeling he’s had since last night. So instead, he goes with, “Just to remind you, copulating in food preparation areas is highly unsanitary and a health hazard to everyone who has to eat that food afterwards. Including yourselves.”

Kyungsoo actually guffaws at that, and it catches Jongin by surprise. The man is in the middle of wiping a tear out of his eye when he speaks next. “I think we’re a ways away from _copulation_ , Jongin. Not sure why you’re so keen to bring that up.”

Jongin realizes he isn’t sure either. He opts to change the subject. “Hey, what were you doing out here on the first day we got here?”

“What do you mean?”

“You disappeared out the back and left me to do room checks by myself, like there aren’t three whole floors to cover in this stupid place.” Jongin turns away and takes a pointed sip. “The extra help would have been appreciated.”

Kyungsoo just scoffs, shaking his head. He then raises his hand and points off somewhere in the distance, toward some of the greenery and foliage dotting the perimeter of the property. Jongin just squints, unsure what he’s supposed to be looking at.

“I was doing periphery checks,” Kyungsoo states flatly, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Probably is, considering the fact that this surely wasn’t the first time they’ve been out on a case together. “Bugs don’t have to be indoors to work, you know. Plus, I was installing some extra security measures.”

After a bit longer, Jongin is able to see what exactly Kyungsoo is referring to - at least a dozen well-concealed laser sights, possibly more, set up in the trees fencing in their backyard and on top of some of the architectural structures surrounding the pool. Judging by the angle they’re at, they’re poised to create a lattice framework - an invisible net, of sorts, ready to catch anyone who dares to cross its path.

“They’re not on right now, but I activate them every time we both leave the place. I get a ping on my phone if someone trips the system.” Kyungsoo lowers his hand and shoves it into his pocket. He sighs. “I don’t know how long we’re going to be here, but even if it is some petty thief looking to sell off some ridiculous crystalline decor that isn’t even ours - look, I just don’t want to be pegged for the damages, that’s all.”

Jongin finds himself nodding slowly. He swallows. “How long did this take to set up?”

Kyungsoo shrugs. “I don’t know. How long was I gone? A few hours?”

Jongin at least has it in him to feel a little guilty upon the revelation. He can’t quite bring himself to look at Kyungsoo, which he thinks the other takes notice of, because the next thing out of the other man’s mouth as he turns to walk back into the mansion is, “Yeah, looks like I can do my job after all, _partner_.”

\-----

There are exactly three components to the tap that Jongdae had passed to them in the tactical equipment briefing they had before heading out to Los Angeles. The USB adapter that actually plugs into the computer, the wireless receiver that allows Jongdae to fiddle with the target device remotely from headquarters, and a small memory piece, which will store copies of whatever relevant data that Jongdae siphons out from the hard drive. Frankly, Jongin wasn’t too familiar with the device, considering that he wasn’t really paying attention during the briefing. He had always assumed that Kyungsoo would be the one dealing with the gadgets, but of course, given the recent shift in circumstances, Jongin was now left to fend for himself in the Im’s home office.

It was easy to slip away from the others. Haejoo was immediately smitten with Kyungsoo upon inviting them in, the two of them chatting excitedly with each other as they walked hip-to-hip, leaving Jongin to trail behind them as they were led out to the balcony patio overlooking the waterfall pool and miniature botanic garden. The most he got from Haejoo was some cooing and a quick peck on the cheek for bringing over a gourmet fruit basket (which cost him over $100, by the way - Jongin was definitely writing that off as a work expense), which he supposes was more than he got from Kyungsoo, who told him he looked absolutely ridiculous lugging it up the street on the walk there. _“You just want every chance you can get to show off your big chunky biceps, whoop-dee-whoop,”_ he had griped. Jongin almost lobbed an apple at him, but then figured that he might get pegged with some outrageous littering fine from the homeowners association, given how he hears a street sweeper barreling past the mansion at least _twice a day_.

It’s actually funny, how Jongin was left to pour for himself while Haejoo fussed over mixing a drink for Kyungsoo that was suited _perfectly_ to the man’s tastes. With how distracted the other two were with each other, Jongin had practically been given unsupervised reign of the minibar, which would have been far more enticing had he been a young, spry eighteen-year-old version of himself and not the current, harrowed version that was in the middle of conducting a federal investigation. Still, he probably could have walked out of the mansion with the Im’s crystalline bottle of _Bombay Sapphire Revelation_ in his hands, and no one would have been any the wiser.

As such, it was easy to excuse himself under the guise of needing to use the men’s room, and _maybe_ there was a small part of him that was secretly glad he didn’t have to continue to bear witness to Kyungsoo showing Haejoo how to properly use the cocktail shaker _Ghost-style_ from behind any longer. After shoving the visual out of his head, he quickly realized that the real challenge was trying to locate where exactly Haejoo’s laptop was within the five stories of their house, although he was eventually able to find it sitting in an open room somewhere on the fourth floor.

Jongin was busy admiring the ficus in the corner when he heard Jongdae curse over the comms in his ear. It was taking a bit longer to break in this time, which would make sense, given the larger capacity of the system. Still, Jongin finds himself nervously drumming his fingers on the desktop, half of his senses keenly attuned to the closed door on the opposite end of the room in anticipation of any unwanted visitors.

 _“I’m not sure how much time I’m going to have to snoop beforehand,”_ Jongdae admits. _“I think I’ll just try to make a copy of her whole hard drive and dig through it later.”_

“That’s fine,” Jongin mutters. “Just hurry up. I’m not sure how much longer I can squat here without being noticed.”

In comparison to the phone tap, the USB tap, while still small and relatively unobtrusive, still hangs down flaccidly by its wire from where it was plugged into the laptop port. When Jongin asked why they couldn’t just make it into one component, like the phone tap, Jongdae had said something about the government wanting to streamline the cost of repairs, and how replacing parts is cheaper than replacing whole units. _Work smarter not harder_ , or something of that sort.

 _“So how are things going?”_ Jongdae asks. A “downloading” progress bar suddenly appears on the screen of Haejoo’s computer, like something straight out of an old-school spy film. Jongin almost snorts.

“Things are fine.” Jongin watches the bar slowly crawl across the screen. “I think they’re downstairs making brunch.”

 _“Or making out,”_ Jongdae helpfully supplies. And Jongin bristles.

Suddenly, there are footsteps coming around the corner in the hallway, but they’re not as sharp as women’s heels against hardwood or as rhythmic as his partner’s gait, Jongin quickly discerns. No, instead they’re more heavy-set, dull-paced thuds that signal that someone _else_ is approaching the home office that Jongin isn’t supposed to be in.

 _Eunseok_ , Jongin immediately registers. The man has been so relegated to the background throughout the events of the last few weeks that it was easy for Jongin to forget that he existed. Up until now, of course.

The footsteps get louder. Jongin drills his eyes into the door, fingers gripping onto the edge of the desk. “There’s someone here. I’m gonna have to make a run for it. Do you have everything you need, Jongdae?”

The bar inches past the 99% mark. _“Hold on, just one more second, and- okay, we’re good, go-”_

In a flash, Jongin is yanking the end of the tap out of the laptop and stealthily charging toward the exit. When he hears the footsteps pause in front of the door, he immediately hits the floor and rolls himself behind one of the club chairs facing away from the entrance.

He tries to steady his breathing. He takes the opportunity to slip the device he’s clutching back into its carrying case, because he thinks Jongdae would kill him if he ended up breaking it during an excursion. Or he might just make the volume more obnoxious on the girl-group bail-out hotline the next time he phones in. Both fates sound equally taxing.

The components fill out two of the slots in the case before he closes it and shoves it back into his pocket. Outside, the footsteps start to recede in the direction opposite from which they came, and Jongin sighs in relief, using the opportunity to make his escape.

He slips out the door and does a hasty check of his surroundings. He’s alone, for now, and he has to figure out what’s the fastest way back to the kitchen so that he can make an alibi for himself, but then the footsteps start coming back from around the corner, and he immediately takes off in the other direction as quickly as his bare feet will allow.

The mansion starts to feel like a labyrinth, but eventually he finds a staircase, swiftly making his way down two flights before rounding into another hallway. He ends up in one of the deeper areas of the house, probably one that isn’t intended for entertaining guests, given that there are unhung paintings leaning against the walls and some sealed boxes sitting at the end of the corridor. It is then that Jongin _knows_ he’s lost, and he’s unfortunately not given much time to process where to go next when he hears heavy, quickened footsteps coming from somewhere in the distance. So he does the next best thing and ducks into the nearest room he sees, belatedly realizing it’s a walk-in pantry.

He pulls the door shut behind him. Pressed up against the shelves, he figures he can’t be too far from the kitchen, given the jars of sauces lying on either side of his ears. Outside, the footsteps appear to recede again, but Jongin hesitates to make any sudden moves. He knows he’s currently lurking in a place that he shouldn’t be, and while he doesn’t think he’s in any immediate danger, he still braces himself against the spice rack.

In the other direction, another set of footsteps starts to near the pantry, but they’re noticeably lighter. Jongin, still on edge, mentally prepares himself for combat (or, at least, to try to charm his way out of the situation) when a familiar voice echoes from around the corner.

 _“Ah, don’t worry noona, I’ll be back soon, I just need to make sure my dear Jaesung-ah didn’t get lost on his way to the restroom. Please, go ahead and start without me, I insist!”_ he hears Kyungsoo yell back. And then, harshly whispered, _“Jongin? Jongin, where the fuck are you? I swear on my badge, you better have your comms on when I phone Jongdae, or else I **will** fucking kill you-”_

Jongin’s shoulders sag in relief. When he sees Kyungsoo pass by through the slits in the cupboard door, he kicks over a box of ramyeon to get his attention. It hits the ground with a thud.

Immediately, Kyungsoo stops in his tracks. He looks over at the pantry. “Jongin?”

Jongin closes in from the other side, peering through one of the slits. Kyungsoo doesn’t seem amused in the slightest.

“What the hell are you doing in there? _Noona’s_ starting to get antsy-”

“ _Noona?_ ” Jongin squawks, incredulously. “You know we’re alone, right?”

“You know what I mean!” Kyungsoo hisses out. He, too, ends up doing a quick check of his surroundings before turning back to Jongin. “You’re not supposed to be here. Haejoo only let me go through here because she said it was a shortcut to the bathroom. We need to get out of here, ASAP-”

“Okay, then get me out of here, and we can pretend like I got lost and just go back the long way-”

“-You _did_ get lost though,” Kyungsoo inserts, unhelpfully. Jongin sneers.

“Is that _really_ the point-”

Suddenly, the heavy footsteps from earlier make a return, closing in on them from further down the corridor, and before either of them can figure out what’s happening, Jongin slides the cupboard open and yanks Kyungsoo inside with him. The door rattles as it’s hastily pulled shut.

It’s a tight fit, but Kyungsoo is able to regain his footing after being thrown off balance. He braces himself with two hands on Jongin’s chest, and Jongin steadies himself by grabbing onto the shelf behind him.

“Can you back up a little?” he asks, suddenly aware of the proximity.

It’s dark, but he can still make out the glare that Kyungsoo sends him. “No, I can’t. These things aren’t really made for two people,” he tacks on. Jongin rolls his eyes.

“Can you at least get your hands off me?”

“Says the person who has his armpit in my face.”

“I think you mean you have your _face_ in my _armpit_ -”

They struggle a bit to readjust themselves so that they’re not all up in each other’s business, but end up inadvertently knocking over another box of ramyeon in the process. It clatters to the ground with another loud thud. They both freeze.

The footsteps in the distance pause for a brief second, making the two of them hold their breaths. And then they’re growing louder, faster, charging toward the pantry with a newfound determination-

Jongin stiffens. “ _Fuck_ , we have to figure out somethi-”

Before he can even finish his sentence, there’s a pair of hands grabbing either side of his face and tugging him forward, and then there’s a pair of lips crash landing on his that are foreign, yet _soft_ , but still foreign all the same. Jongin tenses at the impact, hands flailing to grab onto the body in front of him, finding purchase somewhere on the span of the man’s back, and he feels hands in parallel moving to tangle themselves in his hair. And Jongin realizes then that he’s as stiff as a board, and his lips aren’t moving, despite still being very much in contact with the other’s, so he forces himself to relax, because that’s probably what the current situation warrants. And once he relaxes, it’s suddenly very warm, almost too warm, and then his mouth is moving naturally against the other’s, and it’s so soft, so _wet_. And he’s not sure whose tongue initiated contact first but then it’s mixed into the equation, and he’s not sure who’s pressing who up against what shelf - all he knows is just _hands_ , everywhere, and lips, and a profound thundering in his ears that’s drowning out nearly everything around him, from the half-moan he swore he heard escape the other man’s throat to the _pair_ of footsteps now reaching the other side of the pantry they’re pressed together in -

\- The door is yanked open, crashing against the wall with a _bang_. Light floods into the cupboard, and in an instant, the two of them are springing apart, whipping their heads over to see Haejoo gaping at them with wide eyes and a slightly open jaw. Behind her, Eunseok looms over her shoulder, staring the two of them down with a hint of bewilderment in his eyes.

Kyungsoo’s hands are still gripped onto his shoulders. When Jongin goes to lower his hands from his partner’s waist, he notices how swollen and spit-shiny the other man’s lips are, and he’s almost unable to look away, if not for Haejoo suddenly clearing her throat.

“Well,” she says, somewhat bemused, but with a smirk playing at the ends of her lips. “Haven’t you two been quite the _busy bees_?”

Jongin’s unsure how he’s supposed to react. His brain is operating about a few lines behind, still trying to recover from how overheated it was a mere few seconds ago. Luckily, Kyungsoo’s much quicker to the punch, easing out of Jongin’s hold and repositioning himself so that they’re side by side, with Kyungsoo’s hip pressing lightly into Jongin’s.

He throws Jongin’s arm around his waist. “Ah, you’ll have to forgive me, _noona_ ,” he says, playing up the bashfulness in his tone. Gone was all of the gusto from not a moment earlier, replaced with the perfect facade of calculated apologetics, albeit with a hint of wry coquettishness. Jongin is amazed at his partner’s ability to switch up the tempo in the blink of an eye. His head reels. “Sometimes I just...can’t keep my hands off of him, you know?” Kyungsoo gazes up at him then, large eyes through hooded eyelids, and Jongin’s throat goes dry. “I’m sure you would understand, _noona_.”

Jongin hopes his expression doesn’t give away how rattled he is. He tries to focus on his act, giving Kyungsoo’s hip a good squeeze for good measure. And it’s subtle, but he notices the almost imperceptible widening of Kyungsoo’s eyes at the gesture. Jongin gulps.

Haejoo clears her throat, again. When Jongin returns his gaze to her, he notices how her shoulders are a bit stiffer than before, yet she still has that same gentle, polite smile plastered on her face. “Well, I suppose I do,” she offers, airily. “However, I do wish that you would save the... _shenanigans_ until after we’ve eaten.” There’s a sharp glint in her eyes when she looks at Jongin then, and he has to fight the urge to shrink. “Gives _all of us_ a fair chance to partake in the fun.”

With that, Haejoo simply turns on her heel and saunters back toward the kitchen. Kyungsoo follows in her lead shortly after, and, after pressing out some of the newly manifested wrinkles in his shirt, Jongin moves to make his leave as well. On his way out, however, he’s faced with Eunseok, who remains obstinate, staring him down, jaw set and eyebrows crossed. There’s a certain unplaceable malice brewing within his eyes, but Jongin doesn’t allow himself to ponder on it for long before scurrying after the others.

\-----

On the walk back to their mansion, it’s relatively silent. There’s an intentional distance left in between them, the cool winds of the summer night blowing effortlessly through the crevasse.

“Hey,” he says, breaking the silence. “Thanks for, uh...saving me, earlier.” He coughs.

Kyungsoo says nothing for a bit, and it makes Jongin wonder how the statement landed, or how he even intended it to land. There’s still a weird stinging in his lips, if he concentrates hard enough. He doesn’t know what to make of it.

And then, Kyungsoo just hums. “It’s about what’s best for the case,” he offers. And Jongin forces himself to accept it.

\-----

“Oh _no._ Absolutely not.”

Santa Barbara is about a two hour drive out from where they live. They had received discreet instructions late last night to drive out to some undisclosed address, which corresponded to a cafe located along the wharf. It was a bit odd, going that far out of the way for an in-person briefing, but Jongin had figured there was no such thing as being too careful, especially if it was regarding something of dire importance.

What he hadn’t figured was, not only was Agent Park there, of course, but also Director Bae, out of her normal pantsuit attire and instead in a color-block sundress (probably to better fit their surroundings), alongside newly-minted field agent Kim Yerim. Who also happens to be Jongin’s cousin.

“I don’t recall asking for your _permission_ , Agent Kim.” Director Bae states, sternly. She’s wearing a big floppy sunhat and a pair of double-bridged aviators, but Jongin can still see the resoluteness in her eyes. He casts a glance over at Chanyeol to see if he’d be willing to back him up on this, but said man only picks at his pasta with the end of his fork.

Director Bae had called for an emergency briefing in order to inform them that she was bringing Agent Kim onto the case, having been previously installed as an undercover operative at the local university, completely unbeknownst to the rest of them. Jongin almost choked on his chicken cubes in his salad upon learning of the development.

“Not that I need to justify my tactical decisions to you two, Agent Kim, Agent Doh,” she castigates, lowering her sunglasses so that it’s very clear that she’s staring them down. “But as you very well know, Agent _Kim_ ,” she gestures to Yerim, “easily passes off as the age demographic that the Im’s are liable to target. Therefore, I decided that it would be beneficial for her to be introduced as a support agent on this case.”

Jongin looks over at Yerim then. His cousin sits with her back perfectly straight, hands folded in her lap, obviously keenly aware that she’s beside her superior. But still, she can’t help the small grin playing at the ends of her lips, no doubt delighted that she’s being put on what was probably her first real undercover assignment.

Yerim was inspired to follow after her cousin’s footsteps, applying to the bureau shortly after graduating from university. After many heated disputes had over the phone with several members of their family, Yerim was finally allowed to join the agency - eventually working her way up to the same division that Jongin and Kyungsoo were in - with her parents support and blessing, the only tacit stipulation being that Jongin very well do his best to keep her safe and protect her from harm’s way. This _clearly_ wasn’t going to jive well with his dead grandmother’s last wishes.

Jongin clears his throat. His palms are sweaty, all of a sudden. “Director Bae, I greatly respect your decisions and I deeply apologize for my earlier outburst, but- and I hope you’ll forgive me when I ask again- is there not a better alternative to this plan?” He swallows. “I just don’t want to unnecessarily have to put other agents at risk, is all. I am very confident in my and Agent Doh’s abilities to wrap up this case on our own-”

“-And so am I, Agent Kim,” she cuts off. “But unfortunately, you and Agent Doh have been conducting this investigation for weeks now, and we have yet to see any measurable progress, as far as the bureau is concerned. Agent Kim’s digital analysis of Mrs. Im’s hard drive failed to turn up anything fruitful, and any evidence we have on them as of right now is limited, circumstantial at best. It would never hold up in court.”

Which was the truth. He and Kyungsoo had been going out on _excursions_ with Mrs. Im for almost a month now, and Jongin had yet to find anything concrete beyond whatever was pulled off of her laptop. They didn’t seem to keep any paper copies of things, which made perfect sense given that it was a _criminal operation_ and everything, but it was all the more frustrating for them to have to deal with on their end.

“Therefore, after careful consideration of the circumstances, it is to the best of my belief that the only way to make certain we have enough to arrest them is by catching them directly in the act. A sting operation, of sorts. Which means that your new immediate goal, Agents, is to secure an invitation to Mrs. Im’s impending… _villa soiree_.” Director Bae shudders upon finishing the statement, taking a sip of her strawberry lemonade to wash down her disgust. Jongin himself wrinkles his nose. “It is then that we’ll use Agent Kim as an inside operative to ensure that no civilians are harmed before you two can disarm and sequester the suspects.”

Jongin can only nod, gaze still downcast. He tries to even his breathing, to push down the unease rising in his throat. Beside him, Kyungsoo appears to be equally uncomfortable, hands fidgeting underneath the table. Jongin almost feels oddly supported, in a way.

“Agent Kim,” Director Bae directs at Jongin. Said man looks up, and his supervisor’s eyes are softer than before, but still holding firm. “I understand that you’re naturally protective of your cousin. But she has completed all of the same training requirements you have, and has passed with flying colors. You know as well as I do that she has worked hard to get where she is today. She’s more than qualified for this assignment. I’m confident in her abilities. And you should be too.”

In the face of all of that, Jongin can only nod, especially when seeing how diligently his cousin carries herself, even if she is wearing campus logo sweats, probably just having come from a class that she has to pretend to be enrolled in. And so, he reluctantly accepts (not like Director Bae _needed_ his approval, she reminds him), and they finish their lunch over the rest of Director Bae’s updated directives.

On the walk back to where their car is parked, Jongin still sulks, brooding over the inevitable concern he has over Yerim now being involved in the case. Because Jongin and Kyungsoo weren’t really the ones who would be at risk if things were to go awry. The Im’s aren’t interested in them for those reasons. But Yerim might be, and that was enough for Jongin’s stomach to churn with every step he took farther away from the cafe, away from where Yerim was loaded back into an unmarked van to be carted off back to campus.

Out of nowhere, Kyungsoo bumps into his side, effectively jarring Jongin out of his thoughts. “You should give her a chance,” is all he says, not really bothering to look at him. He huffs. “It’ll be much more than you gave me.”

He brushes past Jongin, stalking ahead to their van in the distance. And Jongin realizes, then, that it was going to be quite the long drive back to Los Angeles.

\-----

It’s been weird lately, Jongin thinks.

It’s the middle of the summer, and Jongin is lounging outside next to the pool. He has a plate of barbecue leftovers balanced in his lap, graciously donated to them from the Im’s Fourth of July jamboree that took place a few weeks earlier, the one where he had to watch Haejoo and Kyungsoo drunkenly dance together to - ironically - the Pussycat Dolls’ version of “Sway”. He could have easily taken up one of the _many_ offers he had received to dance from other men and women, but he turned them all down, for some reason, rather choosing to brood over his glass of stale champagne. He had the curious, fleeting thought at the time, that, even with Haejoo’s stunning silver maxi dress, whose sequins caught and reflected every twinkle of the fairy lights strung up around them in the garden - Kyungsoo was still _definitely_ the Nicole Scherzinger of the party.

Ah, yes. Kyungsoo. His trusty partner. That was what had been weird lately, the fact that the talk between them had been so minimal as of recent weeks. They were never really friends, one could argue, and barely even acquaintances, by some definitions, but at the very least, they would still banter back and forth on occasion about things related to the case, and sometimes about things unrelated. Granted, their only tasks as of late had been reduced to _get Mrs. Im whipped for Kyungsoo_ (Jongdae’s words, not his) - which, by _some_ definitions, the man had already succeeded in long ago.

Still, ever since the day that they had been caught in the pantry, ahem, _creating a diversion_ , Kyungsoo had been largely distant from Jongin, only speaking to him when necessary to confirm procedure or confer progress. Other than that, they barely cross each other’s paths, which he figures is easy when you’re given three whole floors worth of space to avoid each other in.

Which is what he supposes Kyungsoo is doing now. Jongin had seen him briefly this morning when he came in to use the shower (because, even despite all of the mutual ghosting, Kyungsoo can’t swear off the water pressure in the master bathroom), but other than that, he seems to have effectively vanished. So Jongin takes another bite out of the sparerib he’s holding, electing to mind his own business. The pool water remains still, unperturbed to the point where Jongin can see his own reflection staring back at him, all of the meat juices trailing down his chin. He frowns.

Eventually, Kyungsoo does resurface, shuffling out onto the patio unassumingly. They haven’t been much for pleasantries lately, so the man is quick to cut to the chase. “Haejoo sent over an invitation,” he announces from somewhere behind Jongin’s lounge chaise. His tone is a bit more subdued, oddly, but Jongin doesn’t pay it much mind.

“Oh?” Jongin replies, not bothering to turn around. “Is it time already?”

“Not for that,” Kyungsoo dismisses. “For a pool party.”

“Oh.” Jongin sits up a little straighter in his chair, readjusting the plate in his lap so it doesn’t fall over. “Well what time does she want us to be there?”

There’s a pregnant pause, and it forces Jongin to look over his shoulder to where Kyungsoo stands so far away that he’s not even on the deck. One hand is clutching onto a slip of cream parchment paper, and the other is curled into a half fist. A nervous habit of his that Jongin has picked up on over the years, although it seems to be making more of an appearance as of recent.

He sees Kyungsoo swallow. “Saturday, 2:00pm,” he says, clearing his throat. “She wants me there at two.”

It takes a second for Jongin to register, but then, “Oh.” _Oh._ He’s not invited. It’s his turn to swallow, uncomfortably. “Just you?”

“Just me,” Kyungsoo confirms. “She insisted that I don’t trouble poor _Jaesung-ah_.”

Jongin nods, slowly. He assumes that it would make sense, that she would eventually grow tired of having Jongin be the perpetual third-wheel on all of their outings thus far. His presence is effectively the only thing preventing them from making any, er, _larger_ advances in their relationship. Im Haejoo is nothing less than a woman who knows what she wants, and she’s made that clear since the day she entered both of their lives. Still. There’s a part of him that didn’t expect her to be so bold, so soon.

Jongin keeps nodding, internally trying to untangle the weird pit that’s forming at the bottom of his stomach. “And you’re going to be okay on your own?”

Kyungsoo’s face sours at the question. “Of course I would be. Why do you ask?”

 _No reason_ , Jongin tells himself. The statement can’t seem to make its way out, though.

\-----

Throughout his lifetime, Kim Jongdae has broken the law many times. Several laws, several times, sometimes the same law more than once. The only reason he ended up in the bureau instead of in prison was because, after an unsuccessful attempt (though it should be pointed out that only _this attempt_ was unsuccessful - previous trials were, in fact, quite fruitful) to hack into the one of the richest banking institutions in the country (not for any nefarious purposes - Jongdae was very much on the _eat the rich_ agenda, as he often likes to proclaim, and his only real goal was wealth redistribution, not a potential garage full of black market Lamborghinis), the government had decided to offer him a job rather than a life sentence, provided he keep his nose out of trouble and use his powers for _regulated, billionaire-taxpayer-friendly_ good.

Still. Jongdae has done worse things than what Jongin is currently asking of him. Which is why it doesn’t make any sense that he’s refusing Jongin’s request now.

 _what you are asking me to do is probably illegal_ , Jongdae texts over. _and, above that, would definitely get me fired._

Jongin frowns. _but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it_

_jingo, you’re asking me to commandeer an aerial surveillance device so that you can spy on kyungsoo’s op. the model you’re asking for isn’t even supposed to be available to our division. how do you even know about those?_

Jongin, not keen to divulge that he used to hook up with someone in the “public surveillance” sector of the bureau for the sole purpose of learning how to bypass the security firewall on his computer that prevented him from playing FIFA during work hours, offers instead, intelligently, _because we all know the government has them on hand and doesn’t want to admit it_

If this was a video call, Jongdae would probably roll his eyes. Probably is, right now. Jongin can see it in his head.

_still. I don’t want to get fired._

_you won't be fired_ , Jongin insists. _if anything goes wrong, I’ll be the one to go down for it. I promise._

There’s a pause in the message stream. And then, _you shouldn’t be spying on kyungsoo like this, jongin. partners are supposed to trust each other. that’s like, the whole point of partnership_

And Jongin had mulled over this for many hours as he lay awake in his bed, trying to discern the reason for the restlessness he felt deep in his chest since receiving Haejoo’s invitation. Something about the idea of Kyungsoo and Haejoo alone, together, _unsupervised_ makes Jongin’s gut curdle, and after many nights spent tossing and turning over the same question, he had finally settled on an explanation that seemed to make the most sense.

 _it’s not kyungsoo I don’t trust. it’s haejoo._ Yes. That was the reason, he had decided. _I don’t want her trying something and me not being able to do anything about it because I’m too far away. especially since he insisted on going in dark._

The typing animation appears on the screen, then disappears. _yeah, okay, sure. you’re sure that’s the only reason_?

Jongin furrows his eyebrows. _yes, jongdae. now will you help me or not?_

Several minutes go by, and Jongin suspects he’s been left on read. He sighs, readying to turn in for the evening when his phone lights up with a foreboding _you better make sure you’re doing this for the right reasons, jingo._

\-----

Jongdae arranges for the device Jongin requested to be passed along to him that Thursday afternoon. With Jongin’s insistence that Kyungsoo be kept in the dark on this, the most Jongdae could manage within that timespan was a hasty dead drop at a park ten minutes away from their house. So Jongin lies and tells Kyungsoo that’s he’s going out for a run, and fortunately the latter can’t be bothered enough to see what he’s really up to, making it easy for Jongin to return about half an hour later with a suspiciously large silver briefcase that he almost has to drag the last block back.

Soon enough, Saturday rolls around, and Kyungsoo ends up skipping lunch in favor of preparing himself for the afternoon’s events. It’s his first time doing a solo operation since being given his badge seven years ago, having spent all of his time since then in near lockstep with Jongin. It certainly takes a bit of adjusting to wrap their heads around. For even in times past when assigned to their own independent tasks, they’d always be within each other’s orbit, with the unspoken understanding that they’d always be there to back each other up. Today, however, things were different. And if Jongin was this preoccupied over it, he can’t imagine how Kyungsoo must be, even if the other man isn’t expressing it.

Despite all of Jongin’s attempts to convince him otherwise, Kyungsoo still insists on going in completely dark - no comms, no wires, nothing. “I don’t want to risk it,” he says in response to Jongin’s final plea. “I don’t know where things are going to end up today. I don’t want our covers getting blown just because she ends up finding an earpiece buried in my ear.” He buttons up the last of his shirt in the hallway mirror. “We’ve put in too much for this to go wrong now.”

Jongin crosses his arms from where he’s leaned against the doorframe, watching Kyungsoo comb through his hair with his fingers. “And how would she be able to find anything we put on your person?”

Kyungsoo sends him a look. His fingers keep moving. “You know why,” he mutters.

Right. Because that’s the direction things were moving in. Jongin almost prods further, because he’s a sucker for festering discomfort, but has to remind himself that this was about what’s best for the case. It was the _job_. Nothing more, nothing else.

On his way out the door, Kyungsoo stops and turns to Jongin one last time. “I’ll send the panic signal if I need anything,” he informs, expression unreadable, like it has been for the last few weeks. Jongin can only nod, and then he’s gone.

To his credit, Jongin forces himself to wait at least half an hour before springing out to the backyard, pulling out the silver briefcase from where he stashed it in the pool shed and dragging it to one of the chaises near the waterfront. He hastily pops in an earpiece and waits for the connection to go through.

 _“Good afternoon,”_ Jongdae greets him. The voice crackles at the edges, the signal probably still needing a few more seconds to stabilize out. _“Are you ready to damage your working relationship with your partner today?”_

Jongin rolls his eyes. His fingers move to the clasps on the container. “Good morning to you too, Jongdae.”

As expected, a deep sigh comes through into his ear. _“He’s really not going to appreciate you going behind his back, Jongin.”_

There’s a tinge of guilt in Jongin’s stomach that he has to forcibly shove off to the side. He opens the briefcase. “I’m doing this for his safety.”

_“You and I both know that he can fend for himself. There’s something else going on here, and you know it. Truthfully speaking, I’ve had some more time to think about it, and I would just like to put it out there - I don’t like where this is going, Jongin.”_

“Well then you’re free to back out,” Jongin snaps. “Really. If you’re not going to help me, then you’re not obligated to be here.”

It’s silent for a bit. For a second Jongin really thinks Jongdae cut the line, but then there’s another sigh in his ear. _“You’re wielding a half-a-million-dollar classified surveillance device that you don’t even know how to operate. I can’t just abandon you now.”_ He hears some clacking on the other end, followed by a single chime, no doubt the sound of Jongdae launching the corresponding software for the device in front of him. _“But just for the record - I don’t approve of this.”_

“Noted,” Jongin replies. “Now help me get this thing up in the air.”

When Jongin was in middle school, he used to sit behind this kid in pre-algebra who always walked around trying to convince anyone who would listen that birds weren’t real, and that instead they were just drones that the government uses to spy on people. At the time, Jongin thought he was nuts, and never agreed to swap chips with this kid at lunch, lest he look like a raving lunatic too. In the present day, however, he finds himself reluctantly having to admit that the claim might hold more water than people might believe.

Don’t get him wrong - birds are very much real, Jongin would like to clarify, but the gadget Jongdae had procured for him was, in fact, a drone that was very clearly built to resemble a pigeon. It certainly didn’t look like one up close, with its shiny metal exterior, bolted together by large screws - but from a distance, especially whilst in motion, it could plausibly pass off as one. His old contact from the surveillance division used to insist that these prototypes were never used to spy on _domestic_ soil, but Jongin still has his lingering doubts.

_“Now, just to be clear, I know the briefcase comes with a yoke as a courtesy, but don’t touch that, okay? I’ll be piloting the pigeon remotely from here. You’re just there to view the camera feed. Capiche?”_

Jongin reluctantly agrees, laying the bird down onto a cleared off, flat surface like he was instructed to. Before he knows it, the pigeon is taking off into the air, soaring into the sky and flying off in the general direction of Haejoo’s mansion.

On the display in the briefcase, Jongin gets an aerial view of the neighbourhood, the camera protruding from the bird’s stomach providing a surprisingly sharp image. Jongin’s almost impressed. “I’m surprised you didn’t elect to end up in technological research and design, Jongdae. You’d be pretty good at it.”

 _“Please, and miss out on the chance to work with all of you? Who else is going to give me heart attacks every time you bust one of my earpieces?”_ the man jokes. _“Helps me get in my cardio for the week.”_

Jongin only chuckles. Meanwhile, the pigeon, having arrived at its destination, begins its slow descent in altitude over Haejoo’s villa. A few more seconds pass, and eventually, Jongin is able to make out two figures floating around in the pool. One of them is Haejoo, easily identified by her burgundy cutout one-piece, and the other reveals himself to be Kyungsoo, who swims his way over to Haejoo on the other side of the pool before pressing her into a corner and closing in on her slowly. _Oh_.

Jongdae just whistles. _“Well. I surely feel like I’m interrupting something_.”

Jongin doesn’t respond. Instead, he watches as Kyungsoo rights himself in the water so that he and Haejoo are floating within each other’s orbit. They appear to be exchanging intimate words, but unfortunately the bird isn’t close enough to catch any audio.

“Can you bring it down any lower?” Jongin asks. All he can see are the tops of their heads, yet he can’t tear his eyes away from the screen.

There’s some rustling over the line. _“Erm, I don’t think I can, Jingo. Once we get to a low enough altitude, the picture stops being stable too, since we technically have to keep the device in motion. I don’t suppose you see any trees where we can land and get a good vantage point on them, do you?”_

Jongin inspects the image on the screen, but all of the nearby trees appear to be too far away from the pool. “Can’t you just hover?”

 _“It’s a fucking bird, Jongin,”_ Jongdae deadpans. _“Have you ever seen a bird hover?”_

Jongin grimaces. He’s about to spit out another (ill-thought-out) alternative when he witnesses Kyungsoo reaching out to brush some of Haejoo’s hair out of her face and behind her ear. And then, after another second or two, he watches the man go in for the kiss.

And Jongin’s jaw can’t help but fall open slightly, even though he knows that there’s no real reason for him to be this surprised. Still, he thinks this is the first time he’s ever really seen Kyungsoo kiss Haejoo, even if it might have been happening in secret all this time. He finds the visual slightly off-putting. A slow churn starts up in his stomach.

Meanwhile, Jongdae just whistles, again. _“Wow. Man’s got some serious make out game.”_

 _Yes, he does_ , some distal part of his brain helpfully supplies. Jongin almost smacks himself.

The bird continues to swoop back and forth in the sky, feeding back the composite video to Jongin’s display. From this aerial distance, the two of them are only blobs on the screen, moving against each other smoothly, yet any minute gestures are lost in translation. Occasionally Jongin would get a glimpse of someone’s neck or collarbone, particularly when they’re changing up their lip lock angle, but he remains largely unamused.

“Hey, can you at least _try_ to get lower?” he insists, again. “I feel like we should try to get the audio feed going, just in case.”

 _“Just in case of what? What kind of audio are you looking to find? Softcore kissing noises?”_ He hears Jongdae huff. _“You’re being kind of weird about this, Jongin.”_

Jongin ignores the remark. “They could be talking about something that’s related to the investigation,” he reasons, albeit somewhat pathetically. He sees one of Kyungsoo’s hands, which was originally guiding the back of Haejoo’s head, slip underneath the surface of the water. Jongin feels a weird sensation distantly rising in his throat.

 _“Uh, does it look like they’re really shooting the breeze right now?”_ Jongdae retorts. _“Plus, it’s like I said before, once the altitude gets too low, it gets harder to center and focus the image. We’re just about at our limits right now.”_

“What do you mean?” Jongin snaps, incredulously. “How hard can it be to pilot a stupid pigeon?”

Another sigh. _“Look, Jongin, I don’t think you’re thinking straight- whatever you’re about to do, just don’t touch anyth-”_

Overtaken by some wave of strange intuition, Jongin blatantly disregards Jongdae’s orders, grabbing onto the yoke attached to the inside of the briefcase. He proceeds to push forward on it slightly, and is pleased to see the bird lower its altitude in response. But then, when he tries to toggle back up to restabilize, the bird just continues on its nosedive, much to Jongin’s horror.

Jongin panics. “What the fuck? Jongdae, what is it doing?! Why isn’t it going back up-”

_“-Hold on, I think the receiver got confused by the dual input, just- I’m trying to fix it, don’t touch anything-”_

Of course, Jongin doesn’t listen, continuing to yank up on the yoke, as if applying extra force will really do anything to salvage the bird’s flight trajectory. Jongin watches as the on-screen image rotates in rapid circles, the pigeon clearly plummeting on a death spiral toward the ground.

“Jongdae, do something!” Jongin yells over comms. “It can’t land in Haejoo’s yard, we’ll get blown-”

 _“I know, I’m trying my best to regain control, okay!?”_ There’s a pause, and Jongin can hear an alarm signal going off in the background on Jongdae’s end, followed by some cursing. _“Alright, that’s it, I’m gonna have to crash it into the trees, I have no choice-”_

Even if Jongin wanted to argue, he’s never given the chance to, because in an instant the bird stops spinning, instead shooting straight for the trees dotting the perimeter of Haejoo’s botanical garden. And all Jongin can do is watch as a blur of green, brown, and blue whizzes past the on-screen display, the shrill beeping through his comms and Jongdae’s swearing in his ear acting as the orchestral soundtrack to his latest great mistake.

He winces when the pigeon finally crashes into a tree trunk, the camera feed going black for a second, before miracuously coming back online, albeit with some noticeable deficits. Particularly the fact that the lens is now cracked, and there’s strange blotches of blue and magenta pixels that block out large parts of the visual field, some static fizzing in the lower left-hand corner. In the parts that aren’t damaged, however, he can make out a stretch of grass, and, if he squints hard enough, the edge of a pool, and the waists of two bodies submerged in the water. The bird must have rebounded and skid across the yard a bit before settling in its final resting place.

As the mortification and embarrassment starts to settle in, Jongin moves to remove the earpiece from his ear when bits of distorted voices suddenly come through. It’s muffled and crackly, which makes Jongin realize that it must be the audio feed coming _from the stupid dead pigeon_ , now finally close enough to pick up on whatever voices there were.

 _“Hmm? What was that?”_ he hears a woman’s voice ask, and Jongin tenses, wondering if there was a chance he just blew the whole operation. He shuts his eyes and buries his face in his hands.

He’s met with silence. Some more static hissing. And then, a familiar deep voice saying, _“Never mind about it. Come here.”_

The busted microphone isn’t good enough to pick up on the kissing noises that likely resume, but Jongin’s imagination is pretty good at supplying the missing audio.

\-----

To Jongin’s great surprise, and mild bafflement, Kyungsoo doesn’t end up spending the night at Haejoo’s. Instead, the man comes crashing back into their Spanish mansion sometime before midnight - which, he supposes, is plenty enough time to get more than a few things done - the front door whacking against the adjacent wall so hard that Jongin wonders if it left a dent (and if they’d subsequently be billed for repairs).

After getting an earful from Jongdae about how stupid and reckless the whole plan was in the first place, and how expensive and resource-costly a recovery effort for the dead bird drone would be to the department, considering that they were dealing with _classified technology_ that they weren’t even supposed to have access to in the first place, Jongin had spent the rest of the day sulking in the parlor, reflecting over his life choices. He sent at least a dozen apologies to Jongdae, all of them going unanswered, which was justified. He inevitably received a curt message from their handler at around dinnertime, saying that they would need to discuss the several breaches of protocol he made today. The text may have been worded neutrally, but Jongin could see the vein popping out of Agent Park’s neck as he read it back to himself. He made sure to send a preemptive apology to him, too, in hopes that it would alleviate whatever tongue-lashing he was in for tomorrow.

Which is why when Kyungsoo makes his untimely arrival, Jongin is already somewhat mentally prepared for round three. So he braces himself and turns around to face Kyungsoo, who stands rigid in the entryway - the front door still hanging wide open - clutching the battered pigeon drone in one hand.

His stare is deadly. Jongin doesn’t remember ever seeing his partner filled with this much rage. So, he starts off, warily, with an “I can explain.”

Kyungsoo’s jaw sets. “No, you can’t.”

“No, wait, just give me a chance-”

“ _ **No**_ **.** ” Kyungsoo seethes. “I don’t want to fucking _hear it_ , Jongin.”

His voice booms, resounding across the foyer, commanding Jongin into silence. With his free hand, Kyungsoo slams the door shut, making it rattle against the doorframe. He stalks into the house. Jongin chases after him.

“Kyungsoo, please- listen to me, okay? I just- It was a safety thing! You insisted on going in dark, so I had no choice-”

“ _No._ No. You are _not_ going to put this on me.” Kyungsoo doesn’t turn around, continuing to charge forward. “You had plenty of choices. You didn’t _have_ to do anything. For fuck’s sake, Jongin, be a man and take responsibility for your own dumb shit for once.”

Jongin shrinks. He struggles to keep up with Kyungsoo’s furious pace as they round into the kitchen.

“You’re completely right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But please, Kyungsoo, just hear me out-”

He almost crashes into Kyungsoo when the man makes a sudden stop in the middle of the kitchen. They both stand there, silent, frozen, with Jongin a few steps behind Kyungsoo, not daring to close the distance any further. His shoulders are still tense, and he’s still gripping tightly onto the pigeon drone. But not for long, though, because in a flash, Kyungsoo is reeling his whole arm back and hurling the bird into the kitchen sink, which clangs as it hits the side of the basin. He then screams in frustration.

Jongin winces, watching as Kyungsoo heaves unsteadily before stepping over and clutching onto the edge of the sink. He goes silent, again. Jongin takes a cautious step forward, and Kyungsoo stiffens.

Jongin wrenches his hands. His eyes fall to the floor. “Are we blown, Kyungsoo?”

Kyungsoo lets out a wry laugh, shaking his head. “No. The investigation is fine. I fished the dead bird out of the yard on my way out. She didn’t see anything.”

The relief it brings is minimal. Jongin swallows, letting a few minutes pass like that. And then, “Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo, I am so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking-”

“-Yeah. I don’t know either,” Kyungsoo mutters. Jongin opens his mouth to continue, but Kyungsoo cuts him off. “I _never_ know what your fucking problem is.”

Jongin stutters. “Kyungsoo, I-”

“-No, no, you’re going to listen to me.” Kyungsoo finally looks over at Jongin then, eyes boiling with anger, but also a hint of...dejection?

“Just be honest with me, Jongin,” he starts off, heated. “From the day we met, from the day I entered the bureau, you’ve _always_ seen me as lesser than. _Always_ treated me like I was dumb, or underqualified, or _undeserving_ of standing next to you, like you’re some big hotshot and I’m just there to hold you back.” His grip on the counter tightens, knuckles white. “You never even gave me a chance before you decided you were just going to be a dick to me all the time. And I never understood what the _hell_ your problem was, but I guess that’s beside the point now.”

Kyungsoo chuckles then, bitterly, even as tears start to spill over. Jongin is rendered into silence.

“And I know partners don’t have to be friends, and they don’t even have to like each other. And maybe, after so many years, I was naive to think that we could still try.” He sniffles, shaking his head. “But partners are supposed to trust each other. That’s the whole _point_ , Jongin. Even if you don’t like me, even if you _fucking hate me_ , you’re supposed to trust me. Because I still trust you. Even after all of the shit you’ve put me through all these years, _I still fucking trust you to have my back_.”

Jongin exhales, weakly. “I still trust you, Kyungsoo-”

“No, no you don’t,” Kyungsoo spits. “Because if you trusted me, you wouldn’t be sending over a fucking _drone_ to make sure I didn’t screw up a _stupid_ soloop-”

“-I didn’t send it to spy on you,” Jongin pleads. “I promise you, Kyungsoo, it wasn’t because of that-”

“Oh please, cut the fucking crap.” Kyungsoo removes himself from where he’s hunched over the sink, turning to face Jongin fully. “You’ve made it abundantly clear. I get it! You don’t trust me! You might as well have just hung a big blinking sign over my head. It would have been less embarrassing.”

Kyungsoo huffs. He almost starts laughing again, and Jongin doesn’t know if he should say something. He doesn’t even know what he would say. He’s not the one crying, but yet it’s like _his_ throat has closed up, choking off all of the apologies he should be giving right now, the ones his partner deserves to hear. But instead, he’s just standing there, silent, gaping at Kyungsoo. _Like a dead fish_ , a voice inside his head supplies.

A few minutes pass by. And then, “You know what? Fine. It’s fine.” Kyungsoo mutters, wiping tears out of his eyes with his thumbs. “A younger me may have taken it more to heart, but it’s been _seven years_ , Jongin. You can think I’m a shitty agent all you want. That’s fine. But I’m _sick_ of being your punching bag.” He sighs, exhausted. “I’m not the best agent, sure. But I never asked to be. No, Jongin. All I ever asked for was your _respect_.”

With that, Kyungsoo lifts the hem of his shirt to his eyes to dry off the last of his tears before dragging himself toward the exit. He brushes past Jongin on the way out, and, just when Jongin thinks he’s gone, he hears his partner turn to him to say, tiredly,

“When this is over, I’m putting in a request to be transferred to a different department. I’m done, Jongin.”

\-----

“To be fair, you really did put him through the wringer those first few years.”

Despite ignoring most of Jongin’s attempts to contact him throughout the week, Jongdae does eventually forgive Jongin. It probably had something to do with how Jongin filed the entire incident report on both of their behalfs, stretching the truth so that it looked like _he_ was the one who illegally procured the pigeon drone, while Jongdae was mainly there just to make sure nothing went awry. And even though things still did, Jongin thinks that having the busted bird drone sitting in his kitchen sink helped smooth things over with their superiors, seeing as they now didn’t have to go out of their way to send out a recovery team. Because the only thing that special agents fear more than literal combat situations is the amount of paperwork required to assemble a cleanup operation.

So once Jongdae was in the clear, it was easy for him to find the will to return Jongin’s calls, with the added stipulation that he, too, gets an expensive pilates membership paid for in full by Jongin at least through the end of the year. And with how lonely his days had been since the pigeon incident, Jongin was more than willing to agree, eager to have at least one friend back on his side.

They’re on a FaceTime call, because Jongin really needs to be able to _see_ someone right now. Kyungsoo’s been avoiding him for days, always slipping out of a room the moment Jongin walks in, or turning his back to him whenever they’re forced to be in the same place. He’s even stopped coming in to use the shower, and Jongin actually kind of misses having three of his towels go missing from his bathroom every morning.

“He was a dick to me too,” Jongin argues, limply. He’s lying on his bed, rolled over to one side, Jongdae’s face propped on the pillow next to him. “Always snapping at me, criticizing me.”

“As if you don’t do the same exact thing to him,” Jongdae counters. Jongin scowls, and it makes Jongdae roll his eyes.

“Okay, so you were both dicks to each other. We’ve known that. But I’m talking about the _early_ years, like, the first year you two had to work together.”

“What about it?” It’s been so long since then, Jongin has trouble recalling anything particularly grievous that happened during that time. In fact, the last seven years of his life have been so filled with Kyungsoo, he finds himself struggling to pick out moments that were _that bad_ from moments that were, in comparison, _pretty good_. It’s all just been _Kyungsoo_.

“You were _terrible_ to him, Jongin,” Jongdae says offhandedly, like it's common knowledge. “You straight up almost refused to look at him those first few months. You never spoke to him outside of ops or briefings. You’d even go rogue, sometimes, running around acting like you didn’t have a partner to watch out for, and you ended up putting him in danger more than once. I would know. I still have the transcripts.” He sighs, tiredly. “And the really sad thing is, he tried to be _so nice_ to you those first few months. Do you even remember that?”

The vaguest memories start to seep back into Jongin’s consciousness, and the guilt begins to nest in. “So?” he tosses back, as if he didn’t already know where this was going.

“So? Of course he started to resent you after a while, Jongin. No one wants to keep being nice to someone who treats them like dirt. It’s draining. Honestly, I think him being short with you all those years after was just easier for him than not having his kindness reciprocated.”

Jongin burrows himself deeper into the covers. With his own selfishness finally smacking him in the face after all these years, he can’t help but feel uneasy, like he’s being forced to swallow a mere ounce of all the shit he’s put Kyungsoo through. No wonder their relationship never improved, he thinks.

“How much of this came from Minseok?” he asks.

“Oh, almost all of it,” Jongdae replies, readily. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the man has another thesis stashed in his drawer written entirely about you two. This is like, all he ever wants to talk about during our lunch breaks. And can you blame him? You two are far more entertaining than any season of _One Tree Hill_. And we’ve rewatched it at least three times now.”

If it weren’t for the fact that Jongdae was literally talking about his life as if it were a television drama, Jongin would have chuckled. But it feels good, knowing that he still has the capacity to smile within him. It had been a long, tiring, isolating week.

“I just can’t ever figure out why you were so mean to him in the beginning,” Jongdae says after a while. “I remember you mentioning something about, like, _deservedness_ , but honestly your word choice was so bizarre that I shoved all of the context out of my mind-”

“-It was because he was placed in,” Jongin suddenly recalls. “Yeah. I remember now. I didn’t like him because he was the old Director’s nephew.”

Before Director Bae, there was Director Ryu, who was in charge all throughout Jongin’s time in training and his first few years as a field agent. Jongin, like all of the other newly-trained field operatives, had to spend the first couple of years of his career being rotated around different departments, basically playing lackey to the resident senior agents and getting stuck with menial tasks. It wasn’t until his first “permanent” assignment to the narcotics division that he really started to feel things taking off for him, and that was only after about four years of being a paperwork mule. Meanwhile, Kyungsoo didn’t have to suffer through any rotations, simply being stuck with Jongin the second he finished his training. Jongin didn’t even want a partner, but when Director Ryu called him into his office that fateful day to personally introduce him to his dear _nephew_ , he realized he didn’t really have much of a choice.

The argument was that, since Kyungsoo had joined the bureau “later” than most ( _bullshit_ , Jongin had thought - he was practically the same age as him, meaning that he still had at least another 30 good years in the agency), Director Ryu thought it was unnecessary to waste any more time on frivolous assignments when he had passed all of his training qualifications with flying colors. It reeked of nepotism. Jongin never particularly liked Director Ryu, and he’d never be the one to admit it out loud, but he was glad when Senior Supervisory Agent Bae Joohyun from sex crimes was appointed to the role a few years later.

“He basically got to choose his own assignment, while the rest of us had to work our way up the beat to get to where we wanted to be,” Jongin explains. “And when I got transferred to undercover a year later, he just got to follow me. He’s practically been piggybacking on me since he got to the bureau.”

Jongdae goes quiet for a bit, but then he sighs. “I see your point, Jongin, but it’s also not entirely his fault. He didn’t ask to be related to the Director. And even still, I met him shortly after you did, and I never really got the impression that he was trying to ask for any special privileges. If anything, I think he was even more determined to prove himself after that.”

Jongin exhales, frowning. “I guess I never really gave him a chance back then because I hated him so much.”

“Well, do you hate him now?”

The golden buzzer question. And Jongin takes his time to think it over, before responding with, “No. Of course I don’t.” He tongues his cheek. “Looking back, I’m not really sure why I ever did.”

Jongdae hums. “Okay, well, you need to tell him that. Because he doesn’t know, Jongin. He’s just been riffing off whatever you gave him these last few years. Behind all of that sass is probably a lot of hurt that needs to be addressed.”

Jongin lets out a single dry chuckle, running a hand over his face. He stares up at the ivory canopy draped over his bedposts. “So you’re telling me, these last seven years, it was all from a misunderstanding?”

“No, Jongin, it wasn’t,” Jongdae is quick to rebuke, with a slight disapproving glare. “This wasn’t a misunderstanding. Misunderstandings are when one person doesn’t intend to hurt the other. You totally did, back then, and you need to own up to that. However, he didn’t have to respond the way he did, and that also needs to be addressed in time. But it was just this constant back and forth, and eventually the whole thing grew exponentially worse before either of you could have the chance to just sit down and talk about it like _grown ass men_. So no, Jongin, it’s not a misunderstanding. It’s more like a...snowball? Snowball effect?”

Jongin huffs. “More like a fucking avalanche.” And yeah. That feels about right.

\-----

The next evening, Jongin sets out to find Kyungsoo after a week of dancing around each other. He does consider giving up at one point, after searching through every room in the house on every single floor and being in awe of Kyungsoo’s hiding skills, but then something gives him pause when he’s passing by one of the arched bow windows on the second floor.

There, sitting on the small slanted roof outside of the window, is Kyungsoo, staring up at the night sky. He looks at peace, shoulders at ease, and Jongin almost doesn’t want to disturb him, but then he realizes he’s just looking for ways to make more excuses for himself. So he carefully approaches the window, taking in a deep breath before tapping on the wooden frame lightly.

Kyungsoo, fortunately, doesn’t startle too much. He turns around slightly to look over at him - the first time in a long time, and Jongin’s breath hitches.

“Can I join you?” he asks, cautiously.

Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything, turning back around to face the backyard. Jongin readies to leave him alone, figuring he’s been dismissed, but then Kyungsoo gives a single nod.

Jongin has to open the window a little wider to be able to climb out, but he manages to ease his way out without slipping or stumbling. Once he regains his balance, he lowers himself onto the roof panels and slides his way over to where Kyungsoo is, settling beside him. He would try to give a larger cushion of space if he could, but the side roof they’re on is already quite small to begin with.

“Careful,” Kyungsoo mutters, still not looking at him. “The railing is loose.” He nods his head toward the white wooden railing some feet in front of them, the only thing preventing them from having a fully unobstructed view of the pool from where they’re sitting. “Don’t slip.”

The bottom of Jongin’s heart warms a little at the concern. He has to resist the urge to smile, because Kyungsoo is still very much angry with him, and he doesn’t want to risk getting told to get lost because he’s being a dick again. Not tonight, he told himself.

They sit in silence for a while. There’s too many people living out here for them to be able to see the stars, but the moon is fully in view, a white beacon of light hanging behind the clouds in the sky. The weather is slightly muggy, but Jongin’s gotten used to the perpetual sheen of sweat that rests on his skin from the California air. In the distance, he can see dots of lights on mountainsides from other nearby neighbourhoods and towns, palm trees creating tall silhouettes against the horizon.

It is then that Jongin comes to realize, belatedly, that he doesn’t really know where to start. After wracking his brain for something extraordinary and failing to come up with anything useful, he instead goes with the safest option. “I’m sorry.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t respond, which Jongin thinks is justified. He takes it as a sign to continue. “I’m sorry for sending the pigeon drone over to Haejoo’s place that day. I’m not trying to make excuses, but I really wasn’t trying to spy on you or _supervise_ _you_ or anything like that. Regardless, it was stupid of me, and I’m sorry.”

“Then why did you do it?” Kyungsoo huffs. “To sabotage me?”

Jongin flinches at the suggestion. “Of course not.” He glances over at Kyungsoo, who still refuses to look at him. He sighs. “To be honest with you, I don’t really remember why I did it. I’m just sorry that I did.”

Kyungsoo sighs, deeply. “Okay. Is that all?”

 _No_ , Jongin thinks, even if he has to resist the urge to just take the out and make his retreat now. He swallows his pride down, forcing himself to rise up to the moment. “No,” he says. “I need to tell you something.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything, but he also doesn’t stop him either. Somewhere in the distance, a flock of birds caw as they soar through the night sky. Jongin just gulps and continues.

“Do you remember the Santorini bust? The one where they kidnapped the ambassador’s daughter?”

Kyungsoo stills, seemingly needing a second to recall the job Jongin is referring to. “What about it?”

They were still in narcotics at the time, and the original job was just to infiltrate the warehouse where they were keeping stacks of heroin stocked up, but then they had been informed by the missing persons division that they had reason to believe that the group they were after was also responsible for kidnapping a diplomat’s daughter just a few months prior. The jurisdiction had changed, then, and so did their assignment, now reduced to simply observing the warehouse for any suspicious activity, waiting for the day a proper hostage rescue team could be assembled. All of that changed, though, when they saw the warehouse being set on fire.

“We had gone in without backup,” Jongin starts. “And you were saying it was a dumb move, but I was too arrogant to listen to anyone but myself. So I dragged you into my mess, and we broke in through one of the windows, and we split up. I went after the girl, and you held off the mobsters.”

“Yeah, and then the fire department came, along with backup, and she was returned safely to her family by the end of the night,” Kyungsoo finishes. “What’s your point, Jongin?”

“My point is,” Jongin turns toward Kyungsoo a little, speaking directly to him. “that I wouldn’t have made the decision to look for Ambassador Zhang’s daughter had I not known that you would be able to deal with the mobsters by yourself. It wasn’t something I really had to think about. I just knew.” Jongin’s eyes fall to where his feet are curled up beneath him. “I knew that you would have my back.”

Kyungsoo’s breathing seems to stutter, but he still doesn’t fully acknowledge Jongin. Jongin licks his lips over and barrels on.

“You questioned whether or not I trust you. And the first time I heard you say that, immediately, the first thing in my mind was _what?_ And I was just so, so confused. Because yeah, we’ve had our spats over the years, but never did I ever think to myself that I don’t trust you, that you wouldn’t save my ass any day, just like I’d save yours.” Jongin exhales. “I’ve always trusted you, Kyungsoo. And I’m sorry for messing with you so much that I made you think otherwise.”

“Why did you do it then?” Kyungsoo asks, and Jongin can tell he’s trying hard to hold his ground from the way his voice wavers. “What was the reason?”

Jongin inhales, and then bites the bullet. “To be honest, I think I hated how you just waltzed into your first real post without going about it the proper way, the way the rest of us had to, just because you were related to Directed Ryu.” The admission was out there, and there was no going back now. Jongin closes his eyes. “I didn’t think that you had earned it. And it bothered me that you had it so easy. And I hated that I was stuck with you, because all I wanted at the time was to prove myself, and I was worried that you were going to be dead weight. And I wondered if you were really ready for the job, or if you were just some privileged kid who bit off more than he could chew.” He swallows. “And I didn’t want to deal with that.”

Kyungsoo bristles. His eyes are downcast, and he starts fidgeting with his clasped hands.

“I didn’t have much of a choice,” he confesses, quietly. “I had all intentions of doing rotations after finishing training, like everyone else, but Uncle insisted.” He bites his lip and sighs. “I should have just told him no.”

“It’s not really your fault,” Jongin admits. “And I don’t think you would have been able to bypass everything if you weren’t qualified to do so. Director Bae _did_ say you excelled at all of the training requirements.”

“You asked Director Bae about my training stats?” Kyungsoo looks over at him then, finally, one eyebrow raised. “Just how many times have you tried to get rid of me?”

Jongin ignores the question. “My point is, I know I was harsh on you back then.” He stops himself. “More than that. I was horrendous to you. And you really didn’t deserve it. I was being stupid, and rather than taking the time to figure out _why_ I was so mad at you all the time, I just took it out on you instead, because it felt easier. But it wasn’t fair to you, at all.” He exhales. “I’m sorry for not giving you a chance, partner.”

Kyungsoo nods, and then he sighs. “I’m sorry, too. I wasn’t exactly the easiest to be around either, sometimes.”

“You were just taking what I gave you,” Jongin says. “I don’t blame you for that.”

When Kyungsoo meets his gaze again, his eyes are softer, and slightly warmer. It’s the first time Jongin thinks he’s ever gotten a real good look at him like this - open, vulnerable, honest. He wonders if this is what Haejoo has seen in Kyungsoo all along, if this was his hidden charm - being earnest and sincere to the point where he wears on his person effortlessly, like a mantle draped over both of his shoulders.

Emboldened, Jongin reaches out across the short distance that separates them, grabbing onto Kyungsoo’s hand. It takes the other man by surprise, and Jongin himself isn’t sure where he got the motivation from, but he clutches tighter, nonetheless, as if to emphasize what he’s about to say.

“You’re an exemplary agent, Kyungsoo. You’re more than that. You’re smart, driven, compassionate. You’re warm to everyone who meets you, and I regret not being able to experience that earlier. You genuinely care about every case we’re given, and you put all of your effort into doing the best job possible.” He looks down to where their hands are locked, and gives it a good squeeze. “And, even after every terrible thing I’ve said to you, done to you, put you through these last seven years - you still can find it within you to give a shit about me. And it shows me that you really do just have the biggest heart out of any person I’ve ever met.” He looks him in the eye, steadily. “And I’m just really sorry.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything, but he does stroke the back of Jongin’s hand with his thumb, shoulders relaxed, breathing steady. He casts his gaze back out toward the California night, and Jongin is inclined to do the same. And they just stay there, for a while, just like that.

\-----

There are four plush white chaises out on Haejoo’s balcony patio, arranged on opposite sides and facing each other. Each one comes paired with a small side table - probably to hold refreshments - and there are four monsteras dotting each corner of the deck. The weird thing is that, at the present moment, only two of the chaises are occupied.

Haejoo had insisted that the two of them stop by for an afternoon aperitif, considering that it had been weeks since she had last seen Kyungsoo, and Jongin suspects that she was going through some type of withdrawal syndrome. He’s genuinely puzzled as to exactly what Kyungsoo must have done to the poor woman to make her have it _this bad_ for him, but he finds it amusing, nonetheless.

Jongin, like times past, was left to pour for himself first, and, after too many instances of being overwhelmed by the sheer size of the Im’s bar selection, has now settled on some champagne that tastes like stale mouthwash to be his preferred drink of choice, because that’s always the bottle that’s closest to him whenever he opens the cabinet. Afterwards, he makes his way out to the balcony and settles into one of the chaises. Kyungsoo emerges with Haejoo shortly after, the two of them laughing over something, and Jongin is ready to zone out for the entire afternoon (like he’s used to doing on these weird group dates) when an unexpected weight settles into his side.

Because while Jongin has all reason to expect Kyungsoo to take the chaise next to Haejoo, or even the one beside him, Kyungsoo tosses all of that out the window by choosing to crawl into the one he’s currently lying on, resting so that he’s basically half on top of Jongin, one leg thrown over his. Jongin stiffens, instinctively.

“What are you doing?” he mutters to him, keeping one eye on Haejoo, who’s settling her glass down on the side table with a little more force than usual.

Kyungsoo only hums, snuggling deeper into his side. “I’m cuddling with my dear _husband_ , of course,” he offers, and Jongin’s throat goes dry. “Plus, I think Haejoo has a weird jealousy thing going on.”

“ _What?_ ” Jongin hisses out, but Kyungsoo dismisses the inquiry, instead turning his attention back over to their host. “Ah, _noona_ , you’ve done it again. This drink is absolutely divine,” he imparts, Jongin damn well knowing he hasn’t even sipped from it yet. He almost snorts.

Haejoo only hums. She folds herself into her chaise, throwing a blanket over her lap to cover up where her sundress rides up her thighs. “Yes, well, I’m glad to hear it,” she offers, somewhat tersely. And Jongin thinks Kyungsoo might be onto something.

They’ve been hearing from their other neighbours that Haejoo has started making arrangements for her infamous seasonal... _event_ (Jongin wants to retch almost every time he thinks about it) to take place sometime at the end of August. She’s been on the market for caterers, drink suppliers, and social-feed-friendly decorations for the _guests_ , asking for recommendations from other people living on the block. Some of their neighbours had already received their invitations to the _afterparty_ , they had boasted. Kyungsoo had to hold Jongin back from socking anyone right in their Botoxed faces.

Of course, Haejoo has yet to extend the invitation to either Kyungsoo or Jongin. Jongin thinks that she’s still trying to suss out whether or not they could be trusted, which makes sense, given that they _were_ the newest additions to the neighbourhood. The lingering hope was that Kyungsoo could enchant her enough so that she would throw the last of her caution to the wind, but Kyungsoo had admitted to Jongin that their relationship had been a bit stunted lately.

 _“I think she wants what she can’t have,”_ Kyungsoo had mused over his _onigiri_ , from that one time he was craving Japanese takeout and guilted Jongin into paying for it after holding the dead pigeon incident over his head, again. _“It’s why she only pursues married men. She likes taking away things from other people,”_ he reasoned. _“I think it’s why she isn’t interested in her husband like that. Because she already has him, you know?”_

So he supposes this is a part of Kyungsoo’s plan, to rile her up and force her to act. Mark her territory, in a sense. As such, Jongin forces himself to relax, body melting slowly into Kyungsoo’s embrace, even going so far as to reach down and entangle his fingers with the other’s, resting their intertwined hands on his stomach. In the distance, Haejoo takes a pointedly loud sip.

“Well, aren’t you two cozy,” she airs. Jongin has to hold back a snort.

“Mmm, yes,” Kyungsoo replies, breezily. “Jaesung-ah is the best at the end of a long day. He’s always so warm.”

Haejoo just hums. She taps a fingernail against her glass, tiny clinks traversing the expanse of the patio. “And how did you two end up choosing each other?”

The question is tossed over curtly. Taking initiative, Jongin takes a sip from his mouthwash drink before moving to answer.

“Ah, _noona_ , I told you, we met at a friend’s wedding-”

“-I’m not asking about how you _met_ ,” Haejoo cuts in. She seems to realize the unintended harshness about a second later, though, because she clears her throat and quickly plasters the cordial smile back onto her face. “I mean- _ah_ , don’t bore me, Jaesung-ah. What I’m asking about is the moment you two knew that you wanted to spend the rest of your lives together.”

Jongin balks. He glances down at where Kyungsoo is snuggled into his neck, and the two of them exchange panicked looks.

“Come on you two, indulge me,” she says, tipping back her glass. “I love a good love story.”

He always knew that this day would come. To be fair, they hadn’t really needed to rely on the whole fake marriage thing in a while, seeing as Jongin’s only purpose at this point was to be the designated cuckold. Still. The dossier had included copious details about their supposed first meeting and their own fake wedding, to which Jongin had memorized every last word, but nothing as niche and nebulous as this.

Jongin stammers. “I mean, _noona_ , when does one ever really know of the exact moment? Isn’t it just that when you know, you _kno-_ ”

“-It was a Sunday in February.”

Immediately, Jongin’s head whips down to Kyungsoo. The man swallows, repositioning himself so that he’s sitting up a little straighter, while still leaning some part of his weight on Jongin. Haejoo seems intrigued.

“Go on.” The glass balanced in between her fingers is completely still. Kyungsoo clears his throat.

“We had only been dating a few months at the time. He was taking me out on a road trip up to Vancouver, and we had stopped at a gas station along the way.”

From the look on her face, Kyungsoo had Haejoo’s full, undivided attention. He also had Jongin’s, too, frankly, because the man had absolutely no clue where this story was going.

“But it turned out to be closed, temporarily at least, the owner probably out on a lunch break or something. The door was locked. And we were about to go on our merry way when we saw smoking coming out of the side of the convenience store, and to make matters worse, that’s when we saw a young girl trapped inside.”

And then it finally clicks. _Oh_. Kyungsoo was reappropriating the details of the Santorini bust. It made perfect sense, seeing as it was an experience that they shared together, but Jongin couldn’t help but wonder why he chose _this_ story specifically.

“We later found out she was the owner’s daughter - he got arrested for negligence, but that’s beside the point. We were just about to leave, and then we saw this poor girl banging on the inside of the door, screaming and crying for help. And my first thought was to just call the police, but that’s when Jaesung-ah sprang into action.”

Jongin finds himself transfixed on every word leaving Kyungsoo’s mouth. “He ran over and broke the fire extinguisher out from its case, and then used it to break the glass of the front door. And then he ran inside and threw the little girl over his shoulder and carried her out to safety, just like that.” Kyungsoo exhales. “And it was a variety of aspects for me - from how valiant he looked running out of a burning building like that - very handsome, mind you, the sun hitting all the right parts of his face, like he came straight out of an action film, _mmmh_. _Delicious_ \- to just...how his first instinct when he saw someone in danger was to do everything he could to help, even if it meant putting himself in harm’s way. And that if he felt that much compassion toward a complete stranger, and if he could treat that person with so much genuine care - then it made me realize how much care he must have in his heart for me.” He gulps, then. “His _partner_.”

The actual version of events was markedly less glamorous, with Jongin emerging from the burning warehouse bloodied, bruised, and coughing up smoke, the ambassador’s daughter passed out on his shoulder from all of the exertion. He actually had to be taken to the hospital afterwards, because he had suffered some minor burns on his hand from trying to pry the door open. And Kyungsoo was silent the entire ride there, sat beside him on the bench in the ambulance, seemingly staring off into the distance as the technician wrapped gauze around his raw, stinging fingers.

Presently, though, the only thing that was stinging was the bottom of Jongin’s heart, the words tumbling around his head as he tries to get a grasp on the meaning of it all. He stares at Kyungsoo, lying half on his chest, trying to discern how much of what the man just said was a lie. Because they’re currently undercover, on a mission, and this whole marriage, their whole _relationship_ was a sham, nothing more than a work of fiction fabricated by Minseok from his desk at headquarters. None of it was real. But Kyungsoo sure does make him believe it.

And when Kyungsoo looks back up at him, Jongin finally gets a glimpse into maybe what Kyungsoo really meant. And how maybe there were parts that he _really_ meant, judging by the sincerity teeming underneath his eyes, how his lower lip hangs slightly parted from the other. And he wonders if Kyungsoo can feel the same resounding swell that he feels encompassing his own chest cavity, one that makes him unsure if he should laugh, or cry, or do some mix of the two, because he genuinely doesn’t know what to make of anything. All he knows is that in this moment, the only thing grounding him in this ridiculous, outlandish, disconnected reality where he’s felt nothing but out of place, is Kyungsoo. And he wonders, just maybe, if they’d be willing to ground each other in the next one, too.

 _Shared truths_ , their handler had once said. _Truths_ being the operative word.

\-----

They return to their Spanish mansion before the sun goes down. Haejoo, for once, wasn’t entirely interested in having them stay over for dinner, which was surprising, but Jongin figures it had something to do with how Kyungsoo wouldn’t let go of his hand the entire afternoon, even when Haejoo was trying to feed the man a chocolate-covered strawberry. It was a weird situation to be in the middle of, only remedied by the fact that Jongin had already finished off two flutes of stale champagne by then, to the point where the only thing his brain could really focus on was the way Kyungsoo’s thumb kept brushing the back of his hand.

Things had been different lately, Jongin thinks. Ever since they talked out their _shit_ , the two of them made quick work of learning how to be amicable with one another, actually speaking to each other like normal human beings without the snide commentary in every other sentence. And once he was finally able to see past everything preventing him from experiencing the Kyungsoo that everyone else had the pleasure of knowing all these years, Jongin thinks that it makes a lot of sense. It makes sense why Haejoo was enamoured with Kyungsoo within hours of meeting him. The man carries an aura to him that exudes a silent, steady confidence and an unwavering sense of dependability. The latter being one of his greatest attributes. Jongin would surely know.

“Hey,” he says, and Kyungsoo looks over at him, all wide, earnest eyes. They’re both leaning on the kitchen counter, elbows resting on top of the marble, looking out towards their backyard through the glass of the back doors. “You know, if you ever decide to quit the bureau, you could always fly back out here for casting calls. Your acting skills practically carried us through the afternoon.”

And Kyungsoo only hums, gaze returning back out to the yard. “And who said I was acting?”

 _What._ Jongin almost drops the hoagie he’s holding. Both of them were so sick of all the champagne and caviar they’ve been shoveling down their throats lately, more than willing to order in something cheap and reliable for the night. The bread flattens, significantly, from where Jongin has it in a death grip. “ _What?_ ”

Kyungsoo doesn’t respond. Instead, he sighs, straightening up all of a sudden. And then, smiling, he asks, _“Do you feel like going for a swim?”_

\-----

For the first time since arriving there in June, the pristine surface of the water in their swimming pool is finally broken by Kyungsoo, who cannonballs right into the center, waves frothing up and rippling out from where he landed. He resurfaces not a moment later, shaking the water droplets out of his eyes. He hoots. “It’s not even that cold,” he says, revitalized. “You should come and see it for yourself.”

Jongin stands for a bit longer on the deck, watching Kyungsoo splash around happily. A gust of night wind blows past his bare chest, and he shivers. _Fuck it_ , he thinks, and proceeds to leap into water, closing his eyes as he braces for impact.

He pulls up to the surface and runs a hand through his hair to redirect all the water dripping into his eyes. When he can see again, he takes in the sight of Kyungsoo beaming at him from the other end of the pool. And the water may be chilly (because Kyungsoo is a liar), but the feeling in the pit of his stomach sure isn’t.

Kyungsoo dives his head under the water, paddling around, doing a few laps across the short length of the pool. Jongin gets splashed at a few times in the process, but for the most part he finds himself largely content, floating gently, letting the water do the work of carrying his weight. He doesn’t even notice Kyungsoo having sidled up to him until his head resurfaces right next to his arm. It catches Jongin off guard, and if Kyungsoo notices how startled he was, he doesn’t make a point of voicing it.

Instead, he exhales. “ _Phew_. I think this is the first time we’ve gone swimming all summer. Why didn’t we do this earlier? The pool was right here the entire time.”

 _Because we were too busy dancing around each other instead of communicating like grown adults_ , a voice in his head, that’s starting to sound suspiciously like Jongdae, supplies. Jongin wonders if it was a side effect of having his earpiece in for too long.

Beside him, Kyungsoo huffs. “Well,” he says, mainly to himself. “I guess it isn’t the first time _I’ve_ been swimming this summer.”

Jongin immediately sours. Partly because he thinks that this might just be another setup to rehash the dead pigeon thing, _again_ , but also partly because it causes a lingering question to resurface, one he had pushed to the back of his mind weeks ago. Because it wasn’t really any of his business - still isn’t, really - and a previous him might have gotten his head bitten off for ever asking. Now, though, things were different. So, emboldened, and maybe errantly so, he asks,

“Did you ever end up sleeping with Haejoo that day?”

Kyungsoo goes quiet, face falling. And immediately, Jongin regrets ever voicing the question, because now it’s made things awkward, and _it really wasn’t any of his business anyways_ , even if there is a growing unease rising in his gut-

“No,” Kyungsoo says, after a while. “No, I didn’t.”

Jongin is shocked. Somewhere inside him, the unease quells itself, but he forces himself not to put much thought into it. “What? Why?”

Kyungsoo licks his lips. He goes quiet, again, and Jongin allows him to take his time. The pool water stills around them, only gentle waves ebbing back and forth between where they float.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “It just didn’t feel right. The moment never came. But even if it did, I…” he trails off. “I don’t know. I don’t think it would have felt right.”

Jongin only hums. “She was probably looking forward to that all summer,” he jokes.

To his relief, Kyungsoo chuckles. “Well, that makes one of us.”

A few minutes go by. Jongin’s hands start to prune, and he absently wonders if holding onto Kyungsoo’s would stave off the wrinkling faster.

“Did you really mean what you said?” he asks, his second loaded question of the night.

“Mean what?” Kyungsoo looks up at him then, eyes previously trailing over the ripples crossing in between them.

“About it not being an act,” Jongin presses, hoping the rest of the subtext would land without him having to voice it. “Did you really mean it?”

Jongin realizes, then, in that moment, that he’s never really seen Kyungsoo blush before. But there it was in front of him, an unmistakable flush of red starting from the base of the man’s neck that creeps up to the tips of his ears. Jongin finds himself in awe.

“I mean, I was hoping it wouldn’t be too obvious,” his partner mumbles. And Jongin feels his heart soar.

He turns his gaze up to the darkness hanging above them, trying to see if he could count the invisible stars hiding in the night sky, as if it would help distract him from the rapid beating of his own heart, quell the rush of warmth that he felt overtaking his entire body. His head was running at a mile a minute, thoughts swirling around and unable to settle down long enough for him to process them, to pick apart the strange, new, foreign things that he was feeling-

“Jongin,” Kyungsoo says, out of nowhere, breaking him out of his reverie. “Come here.”

When Jongin comes back down to earth, Kyungsoo is staring at him, heavy and expectant. And for a second, he’s unsure what the man means by _come here_ , since they’re floating less than a foot away from each other, but then Kyungsoo is easing toward him, slowly, arms slightly lifted from his sides. _Oh._

So Jongin closes the distance, raising his hands so that they settle around Kyungsoo’s waist underneath the surface of the water. And Kyungsoo mirrors the position, bringing his arms so that they’re wrapped around Jongin’s shoulders and the back of his neck. They breathe in each other’s orbit, chests moving in synch, droplets of water rolling down the planes. And in that moment, the water doesn’t feel quite so cold anymore.

“Hey,” Kyungsoo starts, not quite meeting his gaze at first, but then mustering up the courage to lock eyes with him, fully. “You know I’d take a bullet for you, right?”

Jongin’s breath hitches. “You would?”

Kyungsoo nods, slowly at first, but then with more vigor, like he’s reassuring himself of the idea. “Yeah, I would. Any day of the week.” He pauses. “Well- maybe I’d need to check my schedule first.”

And Jongin lets out a laugh at that, full-bodied and hearty, throwing his head back, happy, loud peals echoing back and forth between the California mountains until they can’t be heard anymore. In his arms, Kyungsoo is giggling too, the sound light and melodious, and Jongin makes sure to hold him tight so that he’d never have to be without it again.

When he reels himself in, Kyungsoo is staring at him, again, the smile slowly easing off his face as something different starts to settle in. And Jongin allows his eyes to travel over the bridge of Kyungsoo’s nose, the swirling depths residing in the pupils of his eyes, the plush fullness of both of his lips, where a droplet of water runs from the cupid’s bow to the seam.

And then, it finally clicks.

“Kyungsoo,” he says, reverent. “Come here.”

Their second kiss is much less chaotic than the first, both of them having the chance to ease into it properly, Jongin leaning in until there’s only a hair’s breadth of space left, giving Kyungsoo a way to back out if he wanted to. And of course, he doesn’t, instead pressing forward until Jongin can only feel a pair of soft lips on his. And the sigh Kyungsoo lets out makes Jongin feel giddy, which he shows by pressing deeper into him, inhaling his exhales, feeling the other man relax in his hold. And Kyungsoo has a hand underneath his chin, tipping it up closer so that he can swallow more of what Jongin is giving him, the other hand softly tangling itself in the wet strands on top of Jongin’s head. And this time, his tongue naturally finds his way into the other’s mouth without being unsure of how it got there, and they just kiss, and kiss, and kiss, until their chests are full and the warmth that encompasses them is not only mutual, but comforting.

When they break apart, Kyungsoo is positively glowing, and Jongin thinks he might be, too. He floats, happily, simply existing in the moment, thinking about initiating a second (third) kiss when Kyungsoo suddenly says, out of the blue,

_“Well, I think it’s about time we took a shower, don’t you think?”_

\-----

It takes Jongin eleven minutes to join Kyungsoo in the shower of the master bathroom attached to his bedroom. He spends approximately four of those minutes deliberating whether or not Kyungsoo was actually serious about any of this, and the next seven meticulously scrutinizing his own reflection in the mirror. He’s very well aware that he has little to be insecure about when it comes to his body, but still. He can’t recall the last time he felt this nervous about being nude in front of someone.

There have been plenty of times that Jongin has seen Kyungsoo disrobed - almost every morning for the last few months, for example - but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen the other full-on _naked_. He wonders why the other man isn’t being more shrewd about this. By all accounts, they had only just started being _friends_ a few weeks ago. But then again, leave it to someone as bold as Doh Kyungsoo to change up the tempo whenever he so pleases to. His head reels at the elevated trajectory.

Jongin soon learns that, even with two separate shower streams on opposite sides of the stall, showering with Kyungsoo was, to put it mildly, _distracting_. Jongin doesn’t think soap bubbles have ever looked _that_ good sliding down someone’s backside, traipsing over the perfect swell of the nicest ass he’s ever seen. He’s almost jealous. _Almost_. Still, he finds it hard to tear his eyes away from the sight, and all of the other minute details about Kyungsoo’s body that he never got the chance to fully appreciate until now. If this were the showers back at headquarters, the water would have gone cold long ago. His only reminder to finish scrubbing himself down comes in the form of an errant trail of shampoo that makes its way into his eye from his scalp, causing him to curse and shove his face under the stream. Kyungsoo’s snort echoes from the other end of the stall.

When they exit the shower, there’s still this strange moment where Jongin isn’t entirely sure if he _can_ be sure of where this is going. Meanwhile, Kyungsoo crosses into the threshold of Jongin’s bedroom without any reservation, one towel wrapped around his waist, another one wrapped neatly at the top of his head. He casts a fleeting glance back at Jongin, and Jongin can only flash a smile, hoping that it doesn’t give away how flustered he is by everything. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but the man could still very much bid him goodnight and walk out of his room without asking anything more, and Jongin would let him, even if it did mean he’d have to hop back into the shower one last time before heading off to bed.

The creak of his mattress breaks him out of his thoughts. When Jongin looks up, he sees Kyungsoo settled comfortably on top of the bedsheets. The towels are gone. His legs are parted, slightly, and the man is sporting an impressive hard-on. _Oh._

“Well,” he says, casually, like his boner isn’t staring Jongin square in the face. “Aren’t you gonna come here?”

And Jongin does, gliding over to the bed dumbly. When he reaches the edge of the mattress, he pauses. “Are you sure you wanna do this?”

Kyungsoo sends him a look, opening his legs that much wider. A condom is tossed at his face, and Jongin immediately gets the memo. Realization seems to dawn on the other man, though. “Wait, are _you_ sure you wanna do this?”

And Jongin thinks about it, but only for a split second. Then, he’s pulling at the knot in his towel, letting it fall to the floor with a soft _thud_.

Kyungsoo’s eyes widen, and it makes Jongin momentarily insecure about the weight and curvature of his own hard-on, but then Kyungsoo is meeting his gaze, again, with blown pupils and slightly parted lips. “ _Come here_ ,” he whispers, half in a pant. And Jongin goes ahead and dives right in.

Their third kiss is sloppier, but more fervent, and also markedly more comfortable, both of them having gotten a better sense of each other’s preferred paces, the natural push and pull of things, the cycle give and take. Jongin quickly learns that he loves the way that Kyungsoo moans, loudly and unabashedly, all the times previous when he held himself back not being enough in comparison. Now that he’s gotten a taste of the real, unadulterated thing, he decides he never wants to be on the receiving end of a half-baked noise from the other man ever again. Kyungsoo, meanwhile, seems to take to running his hands all over Jongin’s body, his touch delicate yet deliberate, knowing exactly where to massage and squeeze so that Jongin has to bite back his own groans.

“That’s not _fair_ ,” Kyungsoo reprimands lightly, catching onto what Jongin’s doing. He leaves a set of fingernail scratches across Jongin’s shoulder blade, forcing him to let out a hiss. “ _Let me hear you_.”

And so Jongin does, growling right into Kyungsoo’s ear. Which seems to ignite something in the other man, because then he’s matching Jongin’s game twice as hard, and Jongin just goes with what he’s given, seeking places to one up the other and get back what he wants. And the two of them tumble over the precipice of this long journey together, rolling in each other’s pants and moans and whines, pressing their bodies closer and closer until it’s still not close enough.

Eventually, they pull apart when Jongin needs to remember how to breathe. He hovers over Kyungsoo, bracing himself on his forearms, chest heaving unsteadily. Beneath him, Kyungsoo looks absolutely breathtaking, all flushed cheeks, red lips, a sheen of sweat over his forehead.

“Hi,” his partner says, half in giggles, half struggling to regain his breath, too. And Jongin can’t help but smile back.

“Hi,” he breathes, and steals a quick peck, which he soon realizes isn’t enough for him, so he dives in again to kick things off once more, but then Kyungsoo is tapping on his shoulder, and he pulls back, again, slightly confused. It is then that Jongin feels Kyungsoo’s boner pulse against his leg, and he belatedly realizes his own cock is starting to throb, painfully, too. _Oh._

Kyungsoo pushes gently against Jongin’s shoulder, forcing the other man to sit back up so that his weight is off Kyungsoo. And then Kyungsoo sits up too, giving Jongin a light, sweet kiss before rolling over so that he’s on his stomach. He proceeds to bring his knees up, planting them firmly into the mattress, bracing his weight onto his forearms and raising his ass up into the air as high as he can, the arch of his back apparent and alluring. Jongin’s mouth waters.

“ _Oh_ ,” he voices, out loud, probably pretty dumbly, but he thinks he gets a free pass this time around. He stares at where the two globes meet in the middle, and the perky pink hole that’s gaping at him, clenching around nothing.

Kyungsoo just hums, partly muffled by the sheets. “I’m already prepped. Now _come on_.”

Jongin’s completely transfixed, bringing his hands up to knead at the soft flesh, one ass cheek resting in the seat of each palm. This is close to what heaven must feel like, he thinks. “When did you have time to prep?”

“In the shower, waiting for you to stop being dumb,” he bites, but with no real malice. Jongin gives a good hard squeeze, and Kyungsoo moans, shuddering.

Still, Jongin can’t help but frown, slightly, even as he gently massages Kyungsoo’s ass. The pilates lessons were really being put to good use, he concludes. “I was looking forward to doing that,” he pouts.

Kyungsoo turns to him then, resting the side of his head on one of Jongin’s pillows. “Next time, then. Now _come on._ ”

Jongin’s ears perk up at the invitation. “Next time?”

If Kyungsoo wasn’t so horny, Jongin thinks he might have actually rolled his eyes. “I mean, we still have this house for at least another month, don’t we. Plenty of time to get things done.” He faces forward, again, resting his chin on the back of his hands. “However, that might never happen if you don’t show me that you can give me a good time _right the fuck now_.”

And Jongin, not needing to be told twice, immediately gets up on his knees and slips the condom on, spitting into his palm a few times and rubbing it all over the length of his cock, sensitivity teeming. He lines up his cock with Kyungsoo’s hole, tapping the head against the entrance a few times, squeezing out a few more wrenched moans from Kyungsoo. And then, he eases in slowly, using his hand to guide the slide in, and Kyungsoo lets out a hiss.

“Does it hurt?” Jongin asks, albeit somewhat dazedly. Everything just feels so tight, so warm, _so good_.

“No, no, keep going,” Kyungsoo pants. “It’s so, so good, god, _keep going_.”

And Jongin does, until he bottoms out, hips flush against Kyungsoo’s ass. Kyungsoo’s breath is shaky beneath him, and Jongin’s isn’t doing much better either.

He sees Kyungsoo raise himself onto his palms, arms quivering from the exertion. He inhales, exhales, and then-

“God. _Fuck_. Move.”

And Jongin does, reeling his hips back out just to slam them in again, and again, and again, until he builds up a steady, quickened pace that has Kyungsoo writhing against the sheets, letting out moans every time Jongin fills him up. He gets mesmerized by the way Kyungsoo’s ass jiggles every time his hips make contact with the flesh, intentionally increasing the force of his thrusts just so that he can see the bounce of it more, the way the skin ripples on impact. His hands are gripping Kyungsoo’s hips so hard that he’s sure they’ll bruise tomorrow, but he can’t bring himself to care, not when Kyungsoo is so warm and tight and perfect around him. God, is this what he’s been missing out on all these years? Why couldn’t he get his shit together earlier-

“Jongin- _oh my god_ \- come _on_.” Kyungsoo grits out. “Is that all you got? You can give me more, come on, do it, give it to me-”

Kyungsoo’s goading sparks something deep within him, and suddenly he’s picking up the speed, drawing Kyungsoo hips back so that he can piston into him even faster and with less rebound time, and Kyungsoo just moans, louder and louder until he’s almost whimpering about _how good it is, yes, that’s it, give it to me, you’re so good, come on_ -

Jongin throws his head back, letting his eyes screw shut, focusing on the sensation of the slide against Kyungsoo’s walls, the clenching around his cock on every in and every out, Kyungsoo’s whines ringing in his ears of how good it feels, of how good Jongin gives it to him, of how good Jongin makes him feel, of how it’s _oh yes right there, keep it right there, that’s it, that’s it baby, baby, oh my god, fuck, fuck, fuck, that’s it, Jongin, Jongin, Jongin, **Jongin**_ -

And Jongin is feeling electric, like every touch of skin is on fire, and he doesn’t know where he finds the determination in his overloaded brain to reach down and wrap a hand around Kyungsoo’s leaking cock, but he does, and Kyungsoo almost screams, whines climbing higher in pitch, words melting together until it’s just alternations of _**yes**_ and _**Jongin**_ and other unintelligible noises all jumbled together. And Jongin loves the feeling, loves the sensations around his cock and the tightening in his gut, loves that he’s doing something so right, loves that he’s the only one who’s making Kyungsoo feel this way right now, and he’s just so overwhelmed with all the physical inputs and the unsung emotions building in his chest that when he feels Kyungsoo clench and still around his cock after one last broken moan, it’s easy for him to fall cathartically over that edge, too, following after him on that hurried descent toward their new shared destination, with a harrowed, but definitive _**Kyungsoo, baby, I got you** _dancing over the tip of his tongue and past the contour of his own lips.

\-----

Jongin wakes up the next morning with dead weight on his arm and a drool spot cooling on his collarbone. When he looks down, he’s relieved to see Kyungsoo koalaing him, still fast asleep and nuzzled into his chest. Jongin moves to press a kiss to the seam of his eyebrows, ready to settle back into the covers himself and catch a few more minutes of shuteye.

When Kyungsoo stirs later, he doesn’t startle, doesn’t run out of Jongin’s room like last night was a bad dream or an episode he needed to escape from in order to return back to reality. Instead, he firmly seats himself in this one, sitting up on Jongin’s hips and bending over to kiss Jongin until he’s fully roused from his sleep. And Jongin thinks he’s truly radiant like this, with the sun streaming in from his personal balcony and illuminating all of the spots on Kyungsoo’s person where Jongin bit a little too hard, squeezed a little too much. Where his smile is all he thinks he needs to wake up this morning and every morning to follow afterward.

Jongin leans up to kiss Kyungsoo properly, little giggles escaping the other’s throat. Before things can get too far, though, Kyungsoo pushes him away, and, despite hesitating at the sight of Jongin’s pout, slips out of bed and heads down to the kitchen after pulling on a pair of Jongin’s sweats. He smells the scent of bacon wafting into the room shortly after.

Jongin sighs contentedly, stretching his arms out before relaxing against the headboard. Today is good, he thinks. Maybe he’ll go for another swim. Maybe he’ll make pasta for dinner. Maybe he’ll try having Kyungsoo in the parlor, or near the fireplace, maybe against the shower tiles with the jet stream pouring over both of their bodies. Yeah. Today is going to be a good day.

At least, it was going to be, until the moment that a familiar, chirpy voice starts projecting itself from his phone’s speaker. “ _Well. That is the last time I am ever doing an impromptu comms check.”_

Jongin almost yelps, whipping his head over to the offending device. He swipes it off the nightstand as he tries to regain the capacity of his lungs. The call screen isn’t even on. “Jongdae? What the fuck? How are you- _why_ are you here?!”

There’s a pointed silence, and Jongin can sense the glare Jongdae is transmitting subliminally over the airwaves. _“Jongin. I’ve hacked into foreign governments before. Your only secrets - the ones that I don’t have control over, that is - involve the 3,497 pictures on your phone of your dog and the fact that you’re secretly into your partner.”_ He pauses. _“Well. I guess that one’s out of the bag, technically. Congratulations, by the way.”_

Jongin blanches. “How did you know about- _what_?”

 _“Your thing for Kyungsoo? Please. That was the part of Minseok’s thesis that I left out on purpose. No fun in telling you before you could figure it out for yourself. Stretched it out for more seasons that way.”_ Jongin scowls. “ _And you’re not exactly subtle. You may have hated the guy, but damn did you not know how to act whenever he’d come all cleaned up to department parties. I practically had to help you pop your eyeballs back into their sockets and pick your jaw back up off the floor. God knows how you made it this long, watching Kyungsoo get all gussied up and then go and make out with someone else. For your sake, I hope you’re secretly into masochism.”_

Jongin wrinkles his nose. He doesn’t want to think about it. “I meant the other thing. What do you mean, _congratulations_?”

Another pause. _“Like I said. That’s the last time I’m ever doing an impromptu signal integrity check.”_ He coughs. _“I mean, for Christ’s sake, Jingo, why don’t you ever put your comms back in the goddamn charging case? If you just leave them out all the time, one of these days they’re going to run out of battery in the middle of an op, and then you’ll be screwed.”_

It’s slow to start, but the realization dawns upon Jongin soon enough, and then he’s mortified. “Oh my god, Jongdae-”

 _“In my defense, I just wanted to do a quick check to see if the line would stay live for three seconds before disconnecting, but then I heard Kyungsoo bellowing like he was a whale getting nuked, and as a fellow team member who is responsible for the agents I oversee - that’s you two idiots - I felt obligated to stay on to verify that the safety of my operative wasn’t compromised-”_ Jongin pales, running a hand down his face- _“-But then imagine my surprise, and mild disgust, and utter horror when I hear him chanting out “Jongin, Jongin, Joonnngggiiinnnnn”-”_ Jongin winces at the impression, suddenly feeling ill- _“And of course I disconnected after that, went into the bathroom afterward to stab my eardrums out with a paperclip for good measure. But yeah. Congratulations, I guess? Is this what you two have been getting up to in that mansion all by yourselves?”_

Jongin, who has his eyes screwed shut and his palm slapped over them, can only stutter, helplessly. “It’s a recent development,” is all he manages to get out.

And Jongdae only hums. _“Well. I guess if you’re gonna fuck, might as well do it on the government’s dime.”_

\-----

The next time they see Haejoo is when Kyungsoo invites her over to the mansion for a pool party. Not the kind of pool party that they’ve been previously acquainted with, but literally a gathering where they can play _pool_ , because there’s an entire set of billiards tables in the basement of their house that Jongin had no idea even existed.

It was the middle of August. On occasion, they had seen various mysterious trucks driving up to Haejoo’s villa at the end of the block, unloading their contents behind closed gates before driving back out of the neighbourhood. The event was to take place in two weeks, before the end of the month, and Kyungsoo and Jongin had yet to be let in on the details. Headquarters was growing antsy. Agent Park had been calling them personally at least twice a day, foregoing the once-a-week check-ins written in the protocol in favor of giving Kyungsoo his tried-and-true tips on how to properly put the moves on someone, as if his having yet to bed Haejoo was the only piece missing from all of this.

Haejoo, truthfully, had grown more distant as the weeks went on. In the early days of the summer, she was eager to drag them out left and right, inviting them to take a sip from her world, probably just so she could have the chance to fawn over Kyungsoo. Lately, though, the invitations came less frequently, and Haejoo was much more reserved during the times that they did meet, characteristic bubbliness replaced with more pensive, thoughtful stares. Even tonight, when showing up at their doorstep, her usual color seemed to be absent - quite literally, because she was wearing a short black trench coat cinched at the waist instead of one of her traditional summer evening gowns. What was even more surprising was that she had brought Eunseok along with her this time, the man typically having been absent from all of their gatherings thus far. Whilst Haejoo still greeted both of them with a quick hug and a cordial kiss on the cheek, Eunseok remained stoic, largely disregarding the two of them as he quietly followed his wife into the house.

They played a few rounds of teams billiards, household against household, before Haejoo had insisted on playing a solo round against Jongin _alone_. Jongin had accepted, despite the weird tension settling in the air, and Kyungsoo left a lingering touch on his back before going upstairs with Eunseok to refill everyone’s glasses.

He watches as Haejoo rears herself over the table, crouched low to get a good aim on the cue ball. Jongin takes a brief sip from his champagne glass, grimacing afterward. It’s a different kind than the stale-mouthwash variety that he’s prone to pour from Haejoo’s liquor cabinet, but still. After having it served at practically every other meal, Jongin thinks he’s allowed to have a distaste for the substance.

Haejoo pulls the cue stick back, one eye closed. “There’s just something I don’t understand, Jaesung-ah,” she imparts, airily, before pushing the stick forward, sending the cue ball to tumble toward the other colored balls on the table. The yellow one banks off the cushion rails a few times before settling into one of the pockets.

Jongin lowers his glass onto the table. “And what would that be, _noona_?”

She floats over to the other side, cue stick loosely grasped in her hand. “How you would end up settling down with someone like Daewon-ah.”

He furrows his eyebrows. “Pardon?”

She leans over the table again and banks another shot, the blue ball effortlessly tumbling into one of the corner pockets. She smiles to herself.

“I mean, I’ve heard his reasons. But I haven’t particularly heard _yours_.” She rises from the cloth until she’s standing tall, easily staring Jongin down from across the table. “I’ve said time and time again that anyone would be quite fortunate to have a man like Daewon-ah in their life. He’s truly a treasure of his own kind. And yet, you don’t seem to be that particularly concerned.”

“Concerned with what?” he asks, fiddling with the tip of his cue stick that’s leaned against his thigh.

Haejoo presses her lips together. “Concerned that he’s spent the entire summer running around with a woman who isn’t _you_.”

Jongin stiffens. There’s a lot banking on how well he navigates the next few minutes, because he can’t tell where exactly the conversation is going, and he also left his gun upstairs. Haejoo raises an eyebrow, tapping a polished fingernail against the cue stick.

“Yes, that’s the curious thing, isn’t it,” she muses, eyes steady. “How you don’t seem to care. Because any man I know would be more troubled by his husband always being out with someone else, getting cozy behind your back, sometime right in front of you.” She hums. “And you just let him. And it makes me wonder what kind of man you must be.” She leans across the table, again, resting on her palms. “ _Who_ you really must be.”

Jongin gulps, but keeps his gaze fixed on hers. And it is in this moment that Jongin realizes that Im Haejoo was never _really_ the elegant, charming woman whom she makes herself out to be. For her current temperament, as she stands in the middle of Jongin’s basement, lips tightly pressed into a straight line, steely eyes with no hint of mirth or jest within them, fingertip rhythmically tapping against the wood of her cue stick, was much more like her true self. Cold and calculating, carefully choosing her words and crafting her affect so that she commands the attention and the will of others. It’s a clear contrast to the woman he first met on that hot summer’s day in June, and then it dawns upon Jongin that _that_ woman never really existed, and that he’s been witness to a ruse this entire time.

She waits, patiently, determined to catch the moment that he slips. And Jongin kicks himself into gear, making sure that she never does.

“The thing is, _noona_ ,” he starts, firmly grasping the cue stick. “is that I love my husband very, very much.” He steps toward the table, not breaking his stare. “And part of that love, part of our relationship, means that I will do anything for him to be happy. Because I want him to be his happiest by my side, happier than he ever was before he met me.” He rears the stick onto the surface of the table, using one hand to steady his aim. “So if he’s happiest when I allow him to spend time with other people, then I let him. So long as he comes back to me at the end of the day, because that’s when _I’m_ happiest.” He pulls the cue stick back. “Because that’s what love is about. Sacrifices. With the understanding that when you make the choice to sacrifice something, you do it not to gain something from the other person,” he says, and releases his shot. It banks the eight ball without having to rebound off any of the cushions. “But because you love that person. Simple as that.”

Haejoo only hums, pensive. It goes silent for a bit, and Jongin can’t tell if she’s satisfied with his answer. She glances down at the array of balls left on the table.

“You lost,” she observes, easing back slightly.

Jongin just smirks. “No. I think I won.”

The creak of the basement steps forces them both to turn their attention to the two men making their way down the stairs. Balancing two glasses in his hands is Kyungsoo, one for himself and one for Jongin. Eunseok only wields one, and passes it directly to Haejoo upon returning to her side.

Immediately, upon reconvening the group, the energy seems to return to Haejoo’s eyes, although Jongin can see better past it, now. “Well,” she claps her hands together. “I suppose my dear husband and I should get going. But before we do, I should probably take care of what I came here for.”

And with that, she reveals a velvet envelope from within her jacket, midnight black in color, a small diamond encrusted in the wax seal. She passes it along to Kyungsoo, who takes it from her hands with a small bow.

“I’m hosting a bit of a special gathering the Friday after the next. You’re invited to the afterparty.” She looks at Kyungsoo first, then Jongin. “I hope to see the two of you there. Come loose and ready to enjoy yourselves,” she says, cryptically, and Jongin shudders. “Oh, and Daewon-ah,” she turns back to the man, beaming at him. “I wish to see you upon your arrival. I’ve prepared a bit of something special for you,” she informs, glancing briefly at Jongin. “I hope it’s not too much trouble.”

Jongin only smiles, snaking a hand around Kyungsoo’s waist, which catches his partner slightly off guard, but the man easily relaxes after a second.

“Not at all, _noona_ ,” he imparts, casually, with a knowing look. And he swears he sees Haejoo’s eyes narrow slightly at him, but then Kyungsoo is insisting on walking both of them out before it gets too late. So they and their guests bid each other goodnight, and by the end of the hour, their house is much emptier than it was before.

Jongin gathers all of the balls and rearranges them neatly on the table top, putting the cue sticks back on the wall, slipping the chalk back in the holder next to it. Behind him, Kyungsoo hops up onto the pool table, letting his feet dangle over the edge. When Jongin turns to him, he naturally settles himself in between his legs, hands easily finding purchase on his partner’s hips.

“Hi,” he breathes out, glad that it’s just the two of them again. Kyungsoo beams, bringing a hand up to comb through the hair on the back of Jongin’s head. He doesn’t say anything for a while, and Jongin grows concerned.

“Is there something wrong?” he asks. And Kyungsoo doesn’t respond. He simply hums, staring into Jongin’s eyes.

“You were jealous,” he says, as if marveling at the revelation. Jongin narrows his eyes. “What?”

“That’s why you sent the dead pigeon,” he continues. “You were jealous. And you didn’t wanna admit it.”

Jongin initially frowns at the accusation. It’s been at least a month since the pigeon drone fiasco, and, having discarded many of the finer details for his own sanity, Jongin finds himself picking his brain, trying to figure out what Kyungsoo means by that statement. And immediately, almost unintentionally, he’s hit with a wave of bitter discomfort as he relives his memories of that day, revisiting the thought of Kyungsoo and Haejoo _alone, together, unsupervised_ \- _oh._ And maybe Kyungsoo was onto something.

Kyungsoo only hums, seemingly perceptive of when the realization hits Jongin, too. At the very least, Jongin has it in him to be sheepish about it. He nudges his face into the crook of Kyungsoo’s neck, finding it too much to look at him right now.

Kyungsoo gently strokes at Jongin’s nape. When he hums, again, Jongin can feel it through the skin of his throat. “We’ll have to work on that,” he concludes, almost resolute.

“Work on what?” Jongin mumbles into the skin.

“Your jealousy,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing. “At first glance, sure, it might be kind of cute, but speaking long-term, I can’t be with someone who’s jealous. It’s not good for you or me.”

Jongin pulls back immediately, gaping at Kyungsoo, eyes nearly falling out of their sockets. “Be with?” he parrots, weakly, because that’s the most important thing his brain could latch onto. “ _Long term?_ ”

Kyungsoo hums, calmly. “Yeah. If we’re going to keep doing this, you’ll need to be more secure in the fact that I’m always going to only want _you_ ,” he says, like it’s so simple, and Jongin’s head is reeling. “But I understand that that takes time. And we had a bit of a weird start.” He tsks. “But we’ll get there.”

Jongin feels so warm, all of a sudden. He knows it’s probably because it’s like, 80 degrees outside and dastardly humid, but he could literally melt. He wants to melt. He wants to melt all over Kyungsoo, become thick enough that the other man will never be able to wash him off his body, even if he uses the highest jet pressure setting on the shower upstairs. And he wants Kyungsoo to be the one to build him back up again into a fleshy solid human being, and then he wants to do the same thing again tomorrow.

For now, Kyungsoo is waving a hand in front of his eyes, trying to draw him back to reality. “Hey,” he says, and Jongin wants to kiss him. And he totally could. But then, the next thing out of Kyungsoo’s mouth, with hooded eyes and a hushed tone, is “ _come here.”_

\-----

Jongin quickly learns that, maybe even more so than being sheathed inside of him, he really likes being able to finger Kyungsoo open. He likes the way the man’s face contorts when he’s pumping three fingers into him, having discrete control over each of the digits sliding in and out of him, winding Kyungsoo up until he’s a sloppy, moaning mess on top of the billiards table. He also learns that Kyungsoo gives some of the best head he’s ever experienced, and he wants to know if there’s a way to burn the image of Kyungsoo’s lips stretched around his girth into his brain so that he can see it every night before he goes to sleep. And learns that, as much as he liked experiencing the full divinity of Kyungsoo’s behind, he very much prefers being able to see his face when they fuck, loving the way that he can watch every glorious noise escape his lips when he’s doing everything right, the pretty arch of his back off of the tabletop when Jongin hits the right spot.

When they’re finished, they opt to spoon naked on top of the pool table, like the disgusting human beings that they are, too tired to clean up or move themselves. Jongin’s still buried inside of Kyungsoo, and probably will remain that way until he regains enough of his strength to carry Kyungsoo up to the showers, because they forwent the condom this time, and he doesn’t want to be billed for the emotional damage suffered by the poor person who will have to clean out the semen stain from the upholstery after they move out.

Kyungsoo traces aimless patterns into the skin of Jongin’s forearm. He’s humming lightly to himself, and there are so many questions that Jongin has swirling in his mind. Some of them more important than others, but now that he has the permission to voice them, he doesn’t even know where’s the right place to start.

He chooses one, arbitrarily. “So, you’ve liked me this entire time?”

It’s a loaded question, but Jongin has sprung worse things on Kyungsoo. As expected, the man takes it in stride. “ _Like_ is a bit hard to place,” he says, with a sigh. “There was never a definitive moment, at least I don’t think so. But it definitely took me a while to warm up to the idea.”

“The Santorini bust happened early on, though,” Jongin points out. “Less than a year of us working together. What did you call me? Handsome, delicious, _mmmh-mmmh_ -”

“-That’s because I had _eyes_ , Jongin.” He swats at Jongin’s arm. “You already know you’re attractive. You don’t need to hear it from me.”

“But I love hearing you say it. Love it when you build up my ego,” Jongin teases, kissing the skin behind Kyungsoo’s ear. Kyungsoo frowns, but Jongin feels him shiver underneath him.

Eventually, Kyungsoo exhales. “I don’t think I _liked_ you at the time, but I think it did show me that you weren’t a shitty person, you were only shitty _to me_.”

Jongin winces at the reminder, which he deserves, he figures. He presses another apology kiss behind Kyungsoo’s ear, and another one on his neck for good measure. He feels the man relax in his hold.

Kyungsoo sighs, airily. “But yeah. It was definitely weird for me, for a while. Trying to balance how I felt for the person who I had to work with every day versus the person that I knew you could be.” His fingers crawl over and intertwine themselves with Jongin’s, and he pulls their hands up to his chest. “But you were always attractive. That was the worst part. Like, you would piss me off so much, and yet you’d look so good doing it. It was exhausting.”

Jongin chuckles, nuzzling further into Kyungsoo’s neck and inhaling. Kyungsoo presses back further into him, and they hold each other like that for a while, and it’s nice.

“I wish I could have been Haejoo,” he muses, poetically, and hazily, eyes falling shut as a pleasant restfulness eases into his muscles, trickling down the column of his spine. “To have been able to see you the way I see you now, but starting from the moment I met you. How lucky of her,” he yawns, “to have experienced the best of you from the beginning.”

He feels Kyungsoo’s skin turn warm as he blushes, but it’s punctuated with a snort.

“I don’t think you’d want to be Haejoo, Jongin. Remember? _Snobby rich people generally being terrible and doing terrible things?_ ”

And yeah, that’s fair, he thinks, as sleep overcomes him.

\-----

The invitation had stated that they should dress comfortably for the afterparty, not to wear anything too restricting or too hard to move in. Yet, after two months straight of designer dress shirts, fancy pressed slacks, and polished leather shoes, the concept of stepping outside of their house dressed in anything less than that felt almost criminal. So they chose to disregard that part of the invitation, donning full three-piece suits, mostly at Kyungsoo’s insistence. _Might as well go out with a bang_ , he had reasoned. He had even helped Jongin style his hair for the evening, sitting on top of the bathroom counter with the tub of pomade in his hands, Jongin standing in between his open legs, stealing pecks from him every now and then. It was nice, he had thought. It helped to put him at ease, to give him a reprieve so he could prepare himself for the night ahead.

They walk up the street in resolute silence. As they near the villa, thumps of loud party music echo down the block, with the lively sounds of people chattering and screaming, and colorful strobe lights shoot toward the night sky from the front yard. They’re decidedly early, and intentionally so, because the plan was for them to be in position and ready to take down the Im’s _before_ anything truly heinous were to take place.

They ring the buzzer to the gate, and it opens for them at once, probably programmed to run like that for the duration of the night. They walk up the path to the front door, like they’ve done many times in the past, but this time there were hordes of young men and women scattered all across the lawn, many of them with red solo cups in their hands. Jongin looks around him, taking in the sheer number of people that were in the villa that evening, gallivanting freely across the expanse of the yard, completely unaware of what they were in for when the night would draw to a close. And he soon grows queasy, breath quickening, head starting to spin-

“ _-Hey_ ,” Kyungsoo says from beside him, grabbing onto his wrist to tether him back to reality. “Nothing bad is going to happen tonight.” He gives it a good squeeze. “This will all be over soon.”

His hand naturally falls into Kyungsoo’s, and he takes a deep breath, trying to make himself believe it. And then, with his free hand, he moves to ring the doorbell.

\-----

“I’m going to be honest,” Haejoo says, trying to conceal her chagrin behind the brim of her glass. “I wasn’t expecting you two to be here this early.”

From the moment they had shown up on her front doorstep, Haejoo’s natural tempo had been completely thrown off pace. She chuckles too much in between every sentence, eyes flitting around unnaturally, unable to maintain her usual calm, steely affect. She had hastily shuffled them into the kitchen after inviting them in, which seemed to be the only area of the mansion that wasn’t crawling with college students looking for refills or to request the DJ to put on a different song.

“Did I put the wrong time down on the card?” she chirps, plastering a grin on her face that’s just a tad too wide. She taps an acrylic against the body of her wine glass - plum, this time, to match the shade of her dress.

“Oh, no, _noona_ , we just wanted to come by early to see what the commotion was about,” Kyungsoo replies, easily. He casts a look around. Outside, a young man, stripped down to his boxers, runs past the window screeching.

“And what exactly _is_ happening here, if I might ask?” Jongin brings his glass of stale mouthwash champagne to his lips. He takes a sip of it into his mouth and lets it sit there before backwashing it back into the glass.

“Oh,” Haejoo tries to wave it off. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much-”

At that moment, the door to the kitchen swings open, revealing a trio of young women in the midst of conversing with each other. They immediately halt upon realizing they have the wrong room, quipping out hushed apologies and backpedaling out at once. Among the group of girls, however, is Yerim, who only shoots a look at Jongin and Kyungsoo before ducking out with the rest of them.

Jongin feels his stomach turn over. “Excuse me,” he says, lowering his glass onto the table. “I need to go visit the men’s room.” And Kyungsoo sends him an unreadable look before Jongin slips out of the kitchen.

The original soft chandelier lighting throughout the mansion has been switched out for flashing strobe lights and disco balls, and the air is muggy with sweat and artificial smoke. There’s music pounding in his ears, so loud that Jongin can barely hear his own thoughts, and he winces every time he brushes past another drunken, writhing body. Yerim happens to be waiting for him around a corner, and he nearly crashes into her, if not for her grabbing onto the sides of his arms to steady him.

“Hey,” she says, looking him over. “You okay? You don’t look so good.”

There are so many variables that Jongin is being asked to keep track of in his head, so many moving parts to account for, that it takes a second for him to process Yerim’s simple question. “I’m fine,” he prattles, shaking himself out of it. “We can’t be seen talking here for long.”

“I know,” she nods. “I just wanted to let you know that I found the ketamine in the back.”

“ _Ketamine?_ ” Jongin blanches.

Yerim nods, solemnly. “There were a bunch of sealed boxes in the back hallway behind the kitchen. I cut a slit open in the side of one of them with my pocket knife and took a peek inside.”

 _So that’s what those boxes were_ , Jongin thinks, revisiting the day he got trapped in the pantry. She continues speaking. “I let HQ know about it, and they told me to try to get rid of as much as I could before the _afterparty guests_ start arriving.”

“Are you going to be able to take care of it all by yourself?” Jongin inquires, concern evident in his tone. “Do you need help?”

Yerim just grins at him, small but assured. “Don’t worry about me, cousin. Focus on you and Kyungsoo.”

 _Kyungsoo_. Right. Jongin should probably head back to the kitchen before it looks like he’s been gone for too long, given how antsy Haejoo already is. So he nods at Yerim as a goodbye, turning to make his leave when she grabs him by the arm again.

“Wait,” she exclaims, yelling over the music. “One more thing. Have you seen Eunseok?”

Jongin furrows his eyebrows. “Eunseok?”

“Yeah. He’s been hovering around the property the whole night, but I haven’t seen him for the last half an hour or so. Is he in the kitchen with you guys?”

Jongin shakes his head. “No, I haven’t seen him.”

Yerim purses her lips. “Weird. Well. Keep your comms on,” she says. She gives Jongin a light punch in his side, and Jongin pretends to be wounded, both of them exchanging brief knowing looks before parting ways.

When Jongin returns to the kitchen, there’s no one else there.

No sign of Haejoo, no sign of Kyungsoo. Completely empty except for himself, not even a single wayfaring college student milling about in a place that they shouldn’t be on a forage for more alcoholic beverages. Jongin whips his head around multiple times, heart sinking, the panic settling in at the base of his gut. He pushes down the urge to barf, and frantically starts scrambling around the kitchen.

He starts yanking open random cabinets, as if one of them would reveal where his partner has disappeared off to. He even sticks his neck out into the secret hallway behind the kitchen, only to be faced with a barren corridor. He slams the door shut in frustration, falling back against it, knocking his head against the wood as the fear silently overtakes him. There have been times past, sure, where they’ve split up during an op, but this time feels different. This time, for some reason, Jongin doesn’t have the surefire reassurance in the back of his head that he’ll see Kyungsoo later when it’s all over. And the thought sends him into a frenzy, anxieties teeming over, and he lets his eyes fall shut, beating his fists against the door as he tries to hold in a scream-

-There’s a buzzing. A steady, rhythmic buzzing.

Jongin’s eyes shoot open, honing in on the source of the noise. It’s Kyungsoo’s phone, sitting in the middle of the kitchen island, abandoned, clattering against the marble as it vibrates. And Jongin clambers over in an instant, snatching the phone up and needing a few seconds to steady his hands from how much they’re shaking.

His heart drops when he reads the notification.

_INTRUDER DETECTED. INTRUDER DETECTED._

\-----

“What do you _mean_ his comms aren’t on,” Jongin hisses into his earpiece. It’s practically a rhetorical question at this point, but that doesn’t mean he wants to face the answer that’s waiting for him.

He’s currently sprinting back down the street toward his own mansion, running as fast as his feet will take him. He had crashed into Yerim on the way out, only having a few seconds to explain the situation between hastened breaths and a steadily tightening chest. And Yerim almost had to slap him in the face to properly kick him back into gear, but instead chose to grab him by the lapels and tell him “ _I have things covered here, you need to go find your partner. **Now**.”_

 _“It’s exactly that. The signal is offline,”_ Jongdae relays, panic evident in his tone. _“Either he turned it off, which I doubt he did, or it’s broken.”_

Jongin balks. He picks up the pace, burning the rubber on the bottom of his fancy dress shoes with every forceful slap against the pavement.

 _“Jongin, before you go, I shouldn’t have to say this but-_ ” Jongdae pauses. _“Please be careful.”_

“No guarantees, Jongdae.” And then Jongin disconnects the line.

He barges in through the front door of his house, immediately met with a vacant foyer and parlor. He runs to the back of the house to check the backyard, which also turns up nothing, save for the intruder alarms that were going off, floodlights flashing in his face. He rakes a nervous hand through his hair, breathing heavily, trying to figure out what to do next when he hears a thud come from upstairs.

In a flash, Jongin pulls out his pistol from where it was stashed inside his suit jacket, drawing it in front of him. He does a quick check of his surroundings, and then takes off for the spiral staircase in the foyer.

He swiftly ascends to the second floor of the house, moving stealthily, quietly, down each hallway, checking behind his back every so often. He clears a few rooms, kicking in the doors and taking a look around, not finding any sign of anyone else so far. Jongin remains vigilant, senses razor sharp, brows furrowed in concentration. He passes by one of the bow windows, left open- _wait_. _Why was it open?_ -

Something heavy strikes the back of his neck, and the next thing he knows, he’s down on the ground, pistol slipping out of his hands and skidding across the carpet, landing some distance away from him. When he regains his bearings, he quickly rolls over onto his back to view his assailant, who happens to be none other than-

-Eunseok. In the dark, his hulking silhouette appears markedly more ominous, the outline of his broad shoulders adding an extra cloak of sordid menace. He stands over where Jongin is crumbled on the ground, and, even in the near complete darkness, Jongin can make out a smile on the other man’s face, the first one he had ever seen from him since the summer began.

The back of Jongin’s head smarts from where Eunseok had whomped it with his bare fist. He winces, bringing a hand up to rub at the spot, sorely, as if it would really alleviate anything. And it dawns upon Jongin, in that moment, that, for some reason, Eunseok is in his house, and that he had just been attacked by him, and maybe his head is a little slow to the punch due to the blow, but the revelation finally hits him that-

“You know,” Jongin breathes out. And Eunseok’s smile only widens.

“Oh, I’ve _known_ ,” the man says, voice rumbling. “I’ve known since the day I happened to find a curious little wire hanging out of my wife’s laptop.”

 _The adapter_ , Jongin realizes. He closes his eyes, cursing at himself for being so _stupid_. When he opens them, Eunseok is still hovering over him.

“How long?” he asks.

Eunseok only hums. “We’ve known for a while, _Jaesung-ah_. If that’s even your real name.” He scoffs, and Jongin absently realizes this is also the first time that he’s heard Eunseok speak more than two sentences at a time. “We would have done something about it earlier- _I_ insisted that we should have, but my dear wife was so infatuated with your precious _husband_ , she wanted to have a bit more fun with her new plaything before we eliminated the threats,” he imparts. And then, he raises his fist. “Except, she’s decided that playtime is over. And so here I am. _Eliminating the threats._ ”

Before Eunseok can bring his fist down onto his skull, Jongin traps one of his ankles between his legs and flips himself over, effectively making Eunseok lose his balance and hit the ground with a resounding _thud_. Jongin then pounces on the man’s back, wrenching his arm around his neck and squeezing him in a chokehold. He holds his breath and tightens his grip, clenching around the man’s windpipe, and he feels Eunseok trying to pry away his forearms, leaving gashes in the flesh from where his fingernails dig in.

And then, out of nowhere, the world is flipped on its axis when Eunseok musters enough strength to throw himself up and hurl himself to the ground, landing on his back and crushing Jongin in the process. Jongin cries out in pain, and Eunseok rolls off in a flash, leaving Jongin coughing and wheezing as he tries to regain the use of his lungs. He feels a distant ache in his chest when he sits up, thinking that some of his ribs must have been shattered by the blow. Meanwhile, Eunseok is on his feet again, and Jongin only has a few seconds to register the situation before he’s being body slammed, again, by all 400 pounds of a former professional wrestler.

They struggle like that for a bit. Every strike to Jongin’s abdomen is brutal, the wind getting knocked out of him every time Eunseok lands a fist. Jongin manages to land a few kicks to Eunseok’s torso, and one well-placed punch to his nose, hard enough to break the bone with a _crack_ , giving him enough time to slip out and get back on his feet while Eunseok grabs at his own face in pain.

Jongin pants heavily. There’s blood running down his face from all the gashes and broken skin, one cut across his temple and another one across his cheek. He doesn’t know where his gun is, and he doesn’t have enough time to locate it in the dark, not when Eunseok is already on his hands and knees again, slowly pushing himself onto his feet. He turns around to face Jongin, and they stare each other down for a few seconds before Eunseok is charging straight at him, and Jongin ducks and barrels into abdomen instead.

They shove at each other, each one trying to gain the upper hand, landing blows and punches when they can. At some point, Eunseok, using his size to his advantage, almost fully encases Jongin in a full-body death grip, Jongin’s back pressed against Eunseok’s front, and the former wrestler snakes his free hand down - the one that isn’t braced across Jongin’s shoulders - to grab ahold of his wrist, and then Eunseok twists his arm back, and Jongin screams as the pain becomes almost too much to bear.

Eunseok continues yanking on Jongin’s arm with incredible force, already having dislocated it, and Jongin thinks if he doesn’t do something soon, the man might actually stand a chance at tearing it right off his shoulder. He looks around him, and the surroundings may be hazy, what with how swollen his eyes are from the blows, but he realizes that they’ve been fighting in front of the open window this entire time. And just beyond the glass panes, Jongin sees a familiar white wooden railing, and something finally clicks for him in his beaten, battered brain.

So Jongin closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing for a second, mustering up the last of his strength to barrel himself backwards, effectively forcing Eunseok to totter back, too, and Jongin doesn’t stop charging until he feels them hit the wooden frame, at which point he shifts his weight forward and springs himself away, managing to escape Eunseok’s grasp once and for all. Meanwhile, the sheer momentum of his bulk sends Eunseok tumbling out the window, rolling down the side panels and striking the loose railing, which collapses under his weight, and pretty soon the man is tumbling over the edge of the roof as well, letting out a scream as he freefalls to the ground.

The only thing Jongin hears after that is a thud and a splash. He stumbles over to the window, venturing out to survey the extent of the damage, having to crane his neck to get a full view of the situation.

Eunseok’s lower body lies on the deck, legs bent underneath him at bizarre angles. His upper half seems to have landed in the pool water, and he watches as the man uses the last of the strength in his arms to curl himself up so that he’s fully resting on the deck. He can’t move beyond that, though, hissing when he tries to shift one of his legs. There’s some blood running down the side of his head, but judging by the way the man starts wailing for help, Jongin figures he’ll be able to make it.

So Jongin pulls himself back into the house, the numbing effect of the adrenaline starting to wear off, and then his whole body _aches_. Bruises litter his entire face and torso, and his knuckles are bloodied, and his mouth tastes unmistakably like iron. And his _shoulder_ \- Jongin brings his other hand up to touch the spot, hissing when his fingers make contact with the junction, pain shooting down the length of his arm. He tries to move said arm further, and it hurts. _Everything_ hurts, and there’s a part of Jongin that just wants to crumble onto the ground and maybe pass out from the exhaustion, but then he hears a gunshot echoing from downstairs, and he’s shaken back to full alertness in an instant.

He stumbles, unsteadily, to retrieve his gun from where it had flown off to during the struggle, holding it weakly in his hands. With shaky fingers and sharp, unrelenting stabs of agonizing pain, he draws it out in front of him, clicking off the safety with his thumb and wrapping a bloodied finger around the trigger of the gun. And then, with one trembling, precarious foot in front of the other, he slowly makes his way downstairs.

\-----

The first thing that he sees when he descends far enough into the foyer is Haejoo, standing close to the entrance. The second thing is the gun in her hands, steadily pointed at something across the room. And the third thing that he sees, after craning his neck around a bit, is Kyungsoo, who happens to be the thing on the opposite end of the barrel. _Oh._

Jongin doesn’t exactly make his presence a secret, heaving out a pained breath with every step he takes down the stairs. He points his gun at Haejoo, who only glances at him before letting out a laugh.

“Jaesung-ah,” she greets. Her hands remain steady. “So nice of you to join us. We’re just getting started.”

Jongin finishes off the last of the steps, trying to hide the limp in his gait as he approaches Haejoo. All of a sudden, she tsks.

“Ah, ah, that’s close enough,” she warns, but with a smile. She takes a moment to take in his appearance, and the grin on her face only seems to grow in size. “I see you’ve had a chance to meet my dear husband.”

Jongin huffs, steadying his grip. “Oh, did you not have a chance to catch up with him yourself?” he spits out, caustically. “Have you tried checking the backyard? I think he might be out there.”

Haejoo’s lip twitches, but she maintains her steely affect. “You’re funny, Jaesung-ah. I’m really going to miss that about you.”

Jongin glances over at Kyungsoo then. To his relief, the man seems relatively unharmed, no major signs of struggle, save for some minor bruising on his face. He has his hands up, palms facing out, and he stands almost perfectly still, trying hard to show no outward signs of nervousness. His eyes, however, widen impossibly upon taking in the sight of Jongin’s current state.

“Jongin,” he breathes out, shakily. “What happened to you?”

Jongin shakes his head. “I’m alright, Kyungsoo. Don’t worry about me. Everything is going to be okay.” He would try to flash a smile, but there’s a swollen cut on his lip that prevents him from doing so. “I promise.”

Haejoo chuckles then, and Jongin redirects his attention to her once more. He raises the tip of the gun, but the woman remains unfazed.

“Look at you two. Still playing your roles, even up until the very end,” she muses. “I applaud you two, holding up your act for this long. Really. How long has this been going on now? How many months?”

“Haejoo, please, just put the gun down,” Jongin tries. “You don’t have to do this. Just put it down, and you can still walk away from this.”

Haejoo laughs. “Oh, _Jongin_ ,” she starts, and Jongin winces. “That _is_ your name, right? Oh, it’s so nice to finally meet you after all this time.” She huffs, amusedly. “But you see, Jongin-ah, I really can’t do that, and you very well know why,” she says, turning back to Kyungsoo. “Wow. Don’t either of you two ever get tired of lying?”

“We’re not lying,” Kyungsoo says. “Really, _noona_ , this is going to be so much worse if you shoot either of us-”

“Oh, cut the crap, both of you,” she snaps, and Jongin stutters for a second, never having heard her curse before. “Don’t go trying that fake _noona_ shit with me anymore. You and I both know it’s just a lie.” She takes a step forward, irate, and it makes Jongin take one too, following her. “Like everything else that’s ever come out of either of your mouths.”

She raises the tip of the gun to point at Kyungsoo’s head, and it is then that Jongin realizes that the gun she’s holding isn’t even her own - it’s _Kyungsoo’s_ , which she must have procured at some point after stealing him away. Perhaps this was the _something special_ that she had been planning for all along.

“I must admit though, I really do applaud the commitment. It’s actually quite impressive.” She laughs, beaming at the two of them. “Because for me, well, I caught on pretty quickly to how you two weren’t quite who you seemed to be. But I wanted to see how far you would go to try to make me believe it. And really, if I hadn’t known any better, you really could have had me fooled. You two played house so well. And it was so cute to watch,” she coos.

But then, there’s a click that echoes around the room as Haejoo cocks the gun. “But playtime is over now. And I believe both of you have overstayed your welcome.”

Kyungsoo swallows. “Haejoo, you don’t have to do this.”

“Oh, Daewon-ah- I mean, _Kyungsoo_ ,” she corrects herself, huffing. “I really _do_. But I’m really going to miss you. I hope you’ll think of me fondly, wherever you’re going.” She sighs. “You really are a treasure. It’s a shame you weren’t really real, now were you?”

“You shoot him, I shoot you.” Jongin cocks his own gun with a pointed _click_.

Haejoo only hums. “But if you shoot me, I’ll _definitely_ shoot him. I’ll go down with the trigger on my finger if I must,” she counters. “And is that something you really want to risk?”

Jongin falters for a second, but he keeps his gun aimed at Haejoo, even as his hands shake from the exertion of having to keep it held up for this long.

“Not all of it was a lie.” The words tumble out of his mouth, his last desperate attempt at trying to turn things around.

Haejoo laughs, bitterly. “Oh really? This is how you want to play your last card?” She raises an eyebrow at him, scoffing. “Okay then, humor me. Which parts of it were real, then?”

Jongin gulps. When he casts a glance over at Kyungsoo, the latter is staring right at him, expression unreadable, but with the slightest bit of hope teeming in his eyes. And Jongin thinks that if there was ever a time to take the tactical leap without consulting his partner beforehand, it would be now.

“The parts where we were partners, the parts where we said we’d do anything for each other.” He closes his eyes, inhaling deeply. “And maybe the parts where we said we loved each other, too.”

When he opens his eyes, Kyungsoo is staring at him, reverent, bottom lip trembling, and Jongin thinks that there’s truly never been a case of worser timing than this, the fact that they probably have to talk this out later because there’s so much to untangle, given the absurd trajectory of their relationship thus far, but instead, they have to worry about whether or not they’re going to make it out of this alive, or more likely, if they’re even going to survive the next five minutes.

Haejoo seems to mull it all over for a bit. And then, “Fine.”

Jongin raises an eyebrow. “Fine?”

“Fine,” she says. “If you really love him, lower your gun.”

“ _What?_ ”

Haejoo doesn’t stutter. “If you really love your partner, you would lower your gun. You wouldn’t want to keep putting him in harm’s way, would you?” she poses, like it’s supposed to make sense. “If you lower your gun, I’ll let you both live.”

Jongin keeps his aim steady. “How am I supposed to believe you?”

She smiles, gentle but knowing. “I could have had you two killed months ago. And yet, you’re still here, aren’t you?”

Jongin hesitates. When he looks over at Kyungsoo, the man’s eyes are wide and panicky, silently urging him to stand his ground. But then his eyes trail over to the tip of the gun in Haejoo’s grip, where it’s pointed directly at the center of Kyungsoo’s forehead, and all he feels in his chest is _despair_ , and _dread_ , and the phantom mourning for the trajectory of a bullet that hasn’t even been fired yet. And something inside of him simply releases, defeated.

“Fine,” he says.

“ _Fine?”_ Kyungsoo squawks, and Jongin can only send him a look. Haejoo, on the other hand, seems pleased.

“Lower your gun,” she commands. “Onto the ground, and then kick it over to me.”

And Jongin does exactly as she says, hissing a few times as he crouches down to the ground. His pistol hits the marble with a clatter, and he uses the last of his strength to slide it across the floor until it settles next to Haejoo’s stiletto.

Haejoo just hums. “Now. Go on. Go join your _partner_ over there.”

And so Jongin hobbles, slowly but steadily, over to where Kyungsoo stands, dragging one foot at a time. And somewhere along his journey, he locks eyes with the other, and Kyungsoo’s expression is still unreadable, but not because his face is blank, but because there’s too many emotions bubbling over all at once, to the point where no one of them can make it through to the surface, and Jongin understands this, somehow. Because he himself is just _tired_ , and still in a lot of pain, and yet, the only emotion he can really feel right now, as he traipses towards Kyungsoo, limping unevenly, is _solace_ , because he feels like he’s heading home, like crossing those last few tiles that separate them is the equivalent of of returning home after a long day. Because it’s _been_ a long day. And all Jongin really wants to do is go home. So, he _does_.

And on his journey home, he doesn’t notice Haejoo chuckling from behind him. “Fool,” she says. And then she pulls the trigger.

There’s a bang. And for a moment, there’s a part of Jongin that thinks this is the end, because in an instant he’s flying through the air out of nowhere, and he takes it to be the first sign that _this is it_ , he must be hurtling towards the end, and he wonders when this sudden burst of velocity will morph itself into a tempered, leisurely drift toward his final destination. But then, he’s hitting the ground, abruptly, and the world around him shatters. And he lands, particularly, on his bad shoulder, the pain in his arm stinging as much as the panic he feels when he hears Kyungsoo collapse to the floor somewhere nearby with a grunt.

When Jongin rolls himself over, panting for breath and vision coming back into focus, he sees Kyungsoo, lying flat on the ground, staring up at the ceiling, breathing unsteadily. Blood pools on the floor around his shoulder from the exit wound, and the entrance wound stains the front of his dress shirt. Jongin, meanwhile, has somehow made it to the other end of the foyer, a good stretch away from where he was walking, and then it hits him.

_Kyungsoo took the bullet for him._

“You _fiend_!” Haejoo shrieks, now waving the gun at Jongin, charging at him with determined strides. “You _will_ pay for this, you will pay for this with your _life-”_

Jongin, truly, too tired to fight, simply lets his eyes fall shut, when there’s suddenly the _bang_ of another gunshot ringing through the foyer. Except, this one, too, doesn’t result in him being dead. Instead, he hears a _thud_ in front of him, and when he opens his eyes, Haejoo is lying face down on the floor, with a matching shoulder wound staining the fabric of her dress.

And when Jongin looks up, he sees Yerim, standing in the doorway of their house, her gun pointed at Haejoo’s back, the barrel still smoking a little from being freshly fired. They make eye contact, and Jongin could almost cry.

He does start to cry, fat, harrowed tears rolling down his face. And he continues to sob, terribly, as he forces himself up onto his hands and knees, using one of his legs to kick the gun out of Haejoo’s grasp, the woman groaning at the harsh contact. And then Jongin realizes he can’t stand anymore because his legs have given up on him, so he crawls, more like slides, pushing himself across the tiles, using his one good arm to drag his battered self one inch at a time to where Kyungsoo lies. And he gets blood on his fingers from dragging himself that last bit of distance, but he can’t bring himself to care. And he cries harder when he sees Kyungsoo’s eyes glazing over, and he clutches onto him, what’s left of him, with his good hand, shaking him and begging him to come back to him, to come back _home_.

And he doesn’t know where things are going to go, but he still lays himself down next to Kyungsoo, throwing an arm over him, even as the blood from the bullet wound stains the elbow of his dress shirt. And he sobs, and sobs, and the last thing he remembers uttering before passing out was _**I got you, baby. I got you.**_

\-----

The bureau, for once, decided not to play modest when it came to helping tie up loose ends.

All of the university students who attended the party at the villa that night were found completely unharmed, thanks to Agent Kim Yerim disposing of the entire ketamine supply and helping to shelter the students in a safe place before backup could arrive. Meanwhile, the agency was able to make over three dozen arrests from the pool of twisted sickos who showed up later that night for the supposed _afterparty_ , only to find themselves pantsless in an empty villa when droves of law enforcement agents descended upon the property. More arrests are expected to be made, because everyone living on that block is apparently more than willing to rat their neighbours out if it means having a chance at a shorter sentence.

Im Haejoo and Im Eunseok were rushed to the hospital and treated for their injuries, only to be mirandized and taken into custody the second that they had come off of all of the anesthesia. Their assets had been seized shortly after, and their villa had been foreclosed on by the end of September.

Agent Kim Yerim was given a special commendation for her exemplary service, and was assigned to a new regular handler, Supervisory Agent Park Chanyeol, so that she could be better integrated into operations carried out by the undercover division. Senior Intelligence Analyst Kim Jongdae was personally relieved of all of his pending suspensions regarding the illegal commandeering of a classified aerial surveillance device by Director Bae Joohyun, and she applied the same pardon to Senior Agent Kim Jongin as well.

Moreover, the bureau had, surprisingly, not required the agents involved to personally pay for any scratches in the marble, bullet holes in the walls, broken railings, blood in the swimming pool, or any of the other damages done to the mansion during their stay there, with Director Bae writing it all off on the budget as a _necessary expense_. She also granted the primary field agents involved in the investigation fully-paid vacation time through at least the end of the year, and would gladly extend that time if they did so request.

Which is how Jongin finds himself lying on the couch in his cramped apartment in the middle of October. He mindlessly flips through the TV channels using the remote, with a cup of hot tea - not mouthwash champagne - resting on the coffee table in front of him.

It’s a clear contrast to the lifestyle that he had gotten a taste of over the summer. His studio apartment was much more modest, most of the furniture lacking a color scheme other than being made of wood and being from IKEA. The floors were hardwood, not marble, and the closest thing he had to real carpeting was a beige sheet rug that was thrown underneath the legs of his couch and coffee table. Sometimes the in-unit washer broke, so he’d have to haul all of his dirty suits to the laundromat two blocks over, and sometimes there were cockroaches in the kitchen, so he’d gotten used to saran wrapping all of the plates and utensils in his cupboards whenever he knew he’d be out on a job. But this was Jongin’s place, and, for the most part, he could say that he had almost everything he needed to make it feel like home.

He had spent the last few months resting up in his apartment, allowing his bruises to fade and ribs to heal. He stopped wearing the sling for his shoulder about a week ago, but he’s been instructed to avoid any strenuous activities at least until the new year. So he’s been spending his time watching cartoons, ordering copious amounts of takeout, and thinking about Kyungsoo.

His biggest regret, he thinks, was not being there when Kyungsoo had woken up in the hospital after his surgery. The second that Jongin had been well enough to check himself out, they had carted him back to headquarters to do the debriefing, which was standard protocol, but Jongin couldn’t help but grow restless, wanting to check on his partner personally, even if there were at least a dozen other medical professionals watching over him, keeping him safe and well. He was driven back home afterward, and had barely left his apartment since.

His most frequently contacted number before Kyungsoo was discharged became Agent Park’s, calling his handler at least once a day to ask for status updates on his partner. And Chanyeol would answer all of his questions, even if a lot of them were repeats of each other, with the same tired affect that he always had: _yes, he’s awake, yes, he’s doing fine, no, you can’t go see him, he’s in the middle of debriefs, no, the hospital wants to keep tabs on him for a little while longer - he lost a lot of blood, Jongin, and you’re not a doctor - no, he hasn’t said anything about you. I’m sorry. No, I’m sorry, Jongin, he went home over the weekend. I don’t have any more updates to give you._

It sounds completely absurd, but he really hasn’t heard from Kyungsoo since the incident. Literally, the last time that they saw each other was when Jongin was ugly crying into his shoulder as the man nearly bled out onto the floor and _died_ , and he _thinks_ that this would be something that would warrant a follow-up discussion, along with all of the other important things that they have yet to talk about properly. But Kyungsoo hasn’t contacted him, and Jongin didn’t want to seem like too much of a bother after his first few phone calls went unanswered. So he forces himself to find solace in the fact that they’ll have to see each other, eventually, when they return to work, but he can’t help but wonder how things will be different. Or, as he fears, if they’ll go back to being the same.

It seemed in poor taste to show up at Kyungsoo’s doorstep unannounced, even if he did know where the other man lived. It was something that he considered doing every day, but had to talk himself out of, even going so far as to have Jongdae take possession of his car keys for him. Which, in retrospect, was a terrible idea, because he just _knows_ , deep inside, that Jongdae took advantage of the opportunity to program Jongin’s Tesla to play _only_ girl group songs whenever he starts the engine-

-There’s a knock at his door. And when Jongin answers it, he finds Kyungsoo staring back at him.

“Hi,” is all the man utters out. And Jongin just gapes at him, like a dead fish.

The bruises on his face have healed. He looks markedly healthier, cheeks fuller, a slight blush dusted over them from the chill of the autumn air outside. He’s dressed in a navy crewneck and a pair of black sweatpants, and with how comfy and at ease he looks with himself, Jongin thinks he never wants to see him in an expensively tacky floral dress shirt ever again.

Jongin doesn’t realize he’s still gaping. Kyungsoo has to wave a hand in front of his eyes. “May I come in?”

They settle down onto the couch, Kyungsoo first, then Jongin, who leaves a cushion of space in between them out of caution, even if his instincts tell him to koala onto the man and never let go. In the distance, the heater kicks in, filling the space with a comfortable buffer of white noise. It gives Jongin something else to focus on other than the rapid beating of his own heart. He thinks he might end up back in the hospital if he looks at Kyungsoo for too long.

Kyungsoo clears his throat. “I’m sorry for not contacting you,” he says. “I needed some time to think about things.”

Jongin nods. “Oh,” he replies, dumbly. “Think about what?”

Kyungsoo just swallows. “Us,” he says. And Jongin can only nod, again, even as he feels his stomach threaten to burst from how many knots just formed within it.

Because this was the culmination of Jongin’s fears. That there was a chance that the summer had been nothing more than a facade for them, a weird fever dream passing itself off as a segue from one reality to the next. Because they had spent three whole months trapped together in a perverse fairytale, playing dress up and make believe in a dream house all to themselves. And maybe everything that was felt and said was merely a product of the circumstances and the situation, a fabrication of the heightened emotions that they were constantly under. And maybe that’s what this all was. That they had reached the end of the book, and were now having to face the truth that none of the pages magically become real just because the story has ended.

He doesn’t even notice how quiet the other man has gone until he hears Kyungsoo sigh. “Yeah. I wanted to talk about us. Because I’ve been looking at houses, and I wanted to know what your opinion was on floor plans.”

Jongin balks. “ _What?_ ”

“Yeah. I’m personally more of a fan of the open concept, but I wouldn’t be opposed to more traditional layouts, so long as there’s a lot of natural sunlight - speaking of which, how much extra would you be willing to pay for a skylight?-”

Jongin blinks, slowly, unbelieving. “You. You want us to move in together.”

Kyungsoo nods. “Yes. If you would be up for it. I think it’s a good way to save money - rent prices are increasing, you know-”

“- _Kyungsoo_ ,” he cuts in, eyes popping out of their sockets. His heart thunders in his ears. “We just started- _what_? We’re only- _Kyungsoo._ Are we even _dating_?”

Kyungsoo wrinkles his nose. “I don’t think we need to be _dating,_ Jongin.”

Kyungsoo’s completely lost him. Jongin just stares, openly, feeling like he needs to double-tap his immediate surroundings so that he can rewind ten seconds on this part of the episode, because _clearly_ he’s missing something.

Seemingly catching on to his confusion, Kyungsoo reaches over to grab his hand, lacing their fingers together. “I mean, _dating_ means that you go out on dates. Like, you go out of your way to go spend time with this person, and you do things together. I think that we do that all the time.” He rubs circles into the back of Jongin’s hand with his thumb. “So, and forgive me if I’m interpreting everything wrong, but I guess when everything was shifting between us, over the summer, I just kind of assumed that we were beyond... _dating_. Like. I didn’t feel that we needed to, nor did the term really describe us, because I see you every day, and you see me, and we do things every day...together.” He looks up at Jongin then, meeting his eyes. “So that’s more of the word I was thinking of. To me, we aren’t _dating_. We’re... _together_.”

“Together,” Jongin repeats, as if he’s trying out the word on his tongue. “Together. As in never apart.”

Kyungsoo just beams. “Exactly,” he says, swinging their hands _together_. “And we already have plenty of experience living together on the job, so I was thinking that we could just...live together outside of it, too. And I know that we have a lot to talk about, and we will talk about it all, in time. But there isn’t a huge rush.” He gives Jongin’s hand a squeeze. “Because I don’t know about you, _partner_ , but it sounds like we have a lifetime to talk about things.”

Jongin can’t hold himself back any longer, reeling Kyungsoo in from across the couch and into his arms. They both momentarily groan from the impact, because their wounds are still a little sore, but that’s something he thinks that they can both overlook. And Kyungsoo nuzzles his face into Jongin’s neck, and Jongin just lets his eyes fall shut, naturally, both of them absorbing each other’s presence and breathing in a newfound sense of eternal security that they have yet to put a name to.

“Oh,” Kyungsoo says, muffled into the skin of Jongin’s neck. “And I want a dog. A _big_ dog. I want a skylight, and a big dog.”

And Jongin just laughs, squeezing Kyungsoo tighter. And he thinks to himself, as the warmth settles into his heart - that that Spanish mansion in the hills, with its green grass and crystalline chandeliers, fully-gated and everything, never really stood a chance. That, he thinks, was simply just a house. This, right here, this sacred space in which they've vowed to always be floating within each other's orbit - _this_ is home.

\----- _fin_ \-----

**Author's Note:**

> **some closing thoughts:**
> 
> \- for the record, I don't actually think birds are government-operated surveillance drones.
> 
> \- I wrote this from july 2020 - february 2021, so that's why the ""exoverse"" references span from chullet (1bv era) to kolo. it's also why there's like five different genre switches (but hopefully I smoothed out the edges lol).
> 
> \- most of the outfits mentioned in the fic are referenced from real stage outfits/photoshoot outfits! (bonus points if you can locate the photos I referenced lmao).
> 
> \- this was a labor of love. I honestly didn't know where this was going to go when I started writing this, and I really didn't gain much clarity until like a week before the deadline (insert woozy face here). but by the end of it, I really fell in love with these characters and this verse. I wouldn't mind visiting them again.
> 
> \- thank you so much to the s&h mods for allowing me to participate in this wonderful fest, and putting up with my inability to stick to an extension deadline. you two (three?) deserve the world. it's easier said than done, but I hope you don't let people get you down too much.
> 
> \- working title for this in my google docs: **_"milf magnet kyungsoo"_**
> 
> ✦ **_hello, stranger:_**[mmmhs.carrd.co](https://mmmhs.carrd.co) ✦ **_twitter:_**[@sonjjits](https://twitter.com/sonjjits) ✦


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